Zwischenzug
by lemonjelly
Summary: “Zwischenzug”: a chess move made to play for time. GCR Ch25: “We’re going to go somewhere where everything feels like how you do inside.”
1. The Very Beginning

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Not too complex, really, but I hope you guys'll be able to keep up with this. I'm sure you will; you're not stupid (you ship GCR – how could you be stupid??) Basically, this fic jumps backwards and forwards in time – showing the development of the G/C relationship to put the present-day argument they have into context. **

**I'm having one long fight running through the Even-Numbered chapters as Catherine finds out about Grissom and Sara, and confronts him about it – and, well, everything comes out, I guess. The Odd-Numbered chapters just show their history (which is possibly the best thing to speculate about, out of all television characters ever.) I'm sure you'll pick it up. Anyway, I'd love to get some feedback from this. I reeled out about ten chapters in the week off school in which I was supposed to be studying – it just sort of fell out onto the page. Tell me what you think and – Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

**PS - I'd really appreciate no spoilers beyond 7x07, living in England and all. **

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter One. The Very Beginning**

- o -**  
**

**(Then)**

On the very first day that Catherine met the young Gil Grissom, she'd just turned nineteen – nineteen and eight days – though he'd never have guessed it when he met her on that day. Well, not so much 'day' – rather more at night. She'd been at a party getting very wasted with a few of her dancer friends from the club – they'd all been invited to some guy's apartment downtown. He was some kind of aspiring music producer or something, Freddy or Eddie or someone.

Anyway, this music guy had turned up at the club one night and taken a shine to Catherine. She hadn't been flattered; guys did this all the time, she'd come to realise, in the hope that 'dancer' really did equal 'slut'. Sometimes that was true.

But Catherine had always tried to be wary of guys like that – at least, before she'd had a few shots and lines of coke in the dressing rooms; she could never quite get her mother's voice out of her head when she was sober. That frustrated her, though. The whole point in her running away from home was to get away from that – that rationality. It encouraged her to try and get as wasted as possible – every night.

For the most part, she succeeded. And, when this music guy had failed to take advantage of her despite at least three easy opportunities, Catherine really _was_ flattered – and then a bit disappointed – and then just determined. She accepted his invite to a party over at his place, and promised to bring a few of her hottest friends with her. That was all he wanted, apparently; Catherine wanted to make him want more.

So, at that party, she had more tequila shots, vodka shots and snorted more coke in Freddy/Eddie's bathroom than she'd ever done in a night. And Music Guy – who turned out to be called Eddie in the end – finally started feeling her up against the fridge door.

That was all going well until a few seconds after he rammed his tongue into her mouth. It wasn't anything to do with him, but just that the alcohol and the coke finally hit her in a big chemical mess that shot straight to her head.

"Oh Jesus," she muttered suddenly, pushing him off of her. "Oh fuck."

Eddie frowned – what was she doing? She'd been up for it a second ago; he could see it in her eyes – hungry, adoring. "What?" he said – a little too forcefully. Catherine looked up, wide-eyed – pupils like black pinpricks.

"Oh, no – it's not you," she assured him quickly. Damn, if she'd just screwed things up with him… "I'm just feeling really fucked right now. All the…everything. Shit. Uh – can I go get some fresh air or something?"

Eddie's expression softened slightly and he grinned, kissing her neck and letting his hand travel between her thighs. "Sure thing, babe," he drawled. "As long as you're coming back to finish this."

Catherine smiled back. Yeah, she was. And she tripped out of the kitchen towards his front door, grabbing Stephanie's wrist and dragging her out with her, their heels clicking together in irregular patterns back down the four flights of stairs.

Steph fell out of the apartment block entrance into the cooler air, hand-in-hand with Catherine and giggling.

"This is insane!" she laughed into the early April skies. "I'm fucking wasted, Cat!"

Catherine blinked up at the night sky – it should've been a deep pitch black, but it was fogged with city smog and funny-coloured – and took a few deep breaths. She was feeling better already. She didn't say anything; Stephanie lay down on the concrete path that led to Eddie's apartment block, eyes shut and still laughing. Catherine kept breathing, as though she couldn't ever quite fill her lungs enough.

"Woo! Vegas!" Steph hollered as loud as she could and then started laughing all over again.

-

On the third floor of the apartment block, Gil Grissom sat crouched into the corner of the sofa. He frowned and tried to keep his eyes on the textbook that balanced on his knees. It wasn't working. The thumping beat from the upstairs apartment shook his head and he sighed.

That was it. He'd go down to the landlord tomorrow morning and see if he could move out earlier than the contract held him to. He couldn't take any more of those parties, throbbing through the cracking plaster above his head.

Outside the apartment block, some stupid girls were screaming into the sticky Vegas nighttime.

He had to move out. He had to move out.

He worked as many night shifts as he could just to pay for the goddamn rent and to get away from the shaking in the walls and the streams of people staggering past his door. Nothing made you feel lonelier than being surrounded by people who talked and talked, but never to you. And then he knew he spent half his time at work – the youngest, least experienced CSI intern on the team, tape-lifting cocaine from the dead fingertips of people just like those who danced and stamped their feet across the floors above him.

He had to move out.

-

Catherine grabbed a tight hold of Stephanie's hand – fake nails clashing – and dragged her to her feet.

"Come on, Steph," she said, her head feeling a lot steadier. "Let's go inside."

Stephanie stumbled onto her heels and let herself be dragged along by Catherine, bouncing along the floor like a child's toy on a string, with wheels too small for the places it was going. Catherine hauled her up the stairs and grinned with her teeth.

She tripped on the last step of the third floor and Stephanie dissolved into giggles behind her. Catherine bit back the smile, thinking about getting back to Eddie and hoping he didn't already have another dancer pressed up against the fridge door; that was the thing with these parties – you had to single out what you wanted and really work to make sure you got it.

"Come on, come on, Steph," Catherine muttered and yanked her friend's hand. Stephanie lay down in the stairwell, laughing endlessly.

"You go, Cath," Stephanie slurred, blinking at the slotted stairs above her. "I like it here."

So she went. One-Two-Three-Four-Five… Catherine counted the doors set into the walls along her right-hand side. Six-Seven-Eight-Nine… No wait… it was eight. It was the eighth door along.

Catherine straightened herself up and brushed her fringe back from eyes. Taking a breath, she knocked on the apartment door and put on a smile. She could still hear the muffled music pulsing through the walls. She waited. After what felt like ages, the door swung open.

"Finally," Catherine said, pushing past the guy at the door and walking into the apartment. She paced the living room floor for a while before realising something was not quite right. With a frown, she turned to face a very confused Gil Grissom who still stood by the open door.

"What the fuck's going on here?" she demanded. "Where's Eddie?"

"I…" Gil didn't have an answer for the evidently intoxicated stranger in his apartment – overspill from Eddie's pounding parties. Catherine sighed, exasperated, and walked briskly out of the living room, into the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen – all the time calling,

"Eddie?" she slammed a closet door. "Eddie?"

Gil stood – motionless and confused – watching her roam the apartment. He didn't know what to do and all he could think about was how he had a lecture the next morning.

After checking all of the rooms in the small apartment, Catherine found her way back to the living room and stood in the middle of the rug, staring suspiciously about her.

"Excuse me…erm… Miss?" Gil began, uncertainly. "I think you should…"

But Catherine wasn't listening. A frown darkened on her face and she swayed a little on her heels.

"Eddie," she announced to Gil's apartment. "Eddie, I think I'm going to be sick."

"Oh Jesus," Gil said. He let the front door slam shut in rushing to her, but Catherine paled, vomited on the rug and promptly passed out.

- o -


	2. A Hard Rain

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Thank you for the reviews, guys. I didn't know how this fic would sit with y'all since I think the GCR fanfic topography , as it were, has changed somewhat since I last posted some GCR. I hoped that most of the GCRers would not have been killed off and demoralised by the insane TPTB running with GSR – and from your response, I think you're still living strong, albeit more subdued. So here's to you, reviewers – thanks goes to, ibreak4CSI, Chickie Baby, Peaky, MYSTICAL PANTHER, Dardeile, myfairlady, Lizzy Sidle, DrusillaBraun, Dragonfly Faith and Teliko. x3. Keep on shippin' guys!**

**These chapters are going to be short – don't kill me, it's how they work – and the chapters covering their history will be long. A continuation from each will follow in alternate chapters. Did you ever watch that episode of Friends where Ross and Rachel are arguing and they're stuck for ages trying to work things out in the living room? I guess what was what I was going for –stilted tension, yknow? Or something like that. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
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**Zwischenzug. Chapter Two. A Hard Rain**

- o -

**(Now)**

It was five o'clock in the morning and after another regular graveyard shift – whatever regular meant in their line of work – when Grissom walked up that path to Catherine's front door, as he'd done so many times before. It occurred to him, at the back of his mind, that actually he hadn't been here for a while. Some things had changed – the potted plants were taller or, in some cases, dead; it made him remember times – years and years ago – when he'd be sat on her doorstep, picking dead leaves from the plants in small attempts to save them, while he waited for Catherine to either open the door or come home.

They didn't do that anymore.

As soon as she opened the door, that morning, he knew that she was angry with him. He'd suspected she was, ever since case assignments at work – but when she opened the door, he was sure.

"Hello," she said, deadpan, and stood in the doorway. Now that was wrong for a start. If she hadn't been angry with him, she wouldn't have stayed in the doorway. She used to just open it, smile, and go back to whatever she was doing – letting him come inside without asking – as though he belonged there. But they didn't really do that anymore, either.

"Cath," he began. "Don't be mad at me."

An eyebrow arched. "I'm not mad at you," she told him – lying outright.

Grissom sighed. He knew this wasn't going to be easy.

"Can I come in?" he asked wearily. Catherine shrugged her shoulders and stepped aside to let him in.

"Fine."

And she stood there, as he walked in, and waited to shut the door behind him. She was definitely angry at him.

Grissom hovered awkwardly in the doorway. He glanced at her – her arms crossed across her chest and her jaw tightened.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said. "I wanted to try and explain – if you'd listen."

Catherine made no change in expression. "Then you might as well sit down, then," she replied bluntly.

Gil hesitated and then took a seat on the edge of her couch. After a pause, Catherine sat stiffly in the chair beside the couch and let the silence run on before saying,

"Talk, then."

Gil didn't answer straight away, but pressed his fingers into his forehead, inwardly groaning. Why did Catherine always have to be so difficult when she was angry or hurt? Why did their relationship have to be damn complicated? And why did he always, always find himself back here on the end of every minor disaster?

"I'm sorry," he started, figuring that it was as good a place as any to begin.

"Sorry for what?" was Catherine's cool response.

He paused. The words almost didn't want to leave his mouth. "For sleeping with Sara."

It was so un-Grissom.

"Why?" Catherine demanded, instantly. "Why should you be sorry? It's your life. It's got nothing to do with me."

Grissom sighed again, exasperated.

"Fine," he replied sharply. "Then I'm not sorry. And you have no right to be angry."

"I'm not angry," she insisted.

Gil sunk his head in his hands and Catherine stared obstinately at the wall opposite her.

It was going to be a long day.

- o -


	3. The Morning After

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**I know! Sleeping with Sara – what a shocker. Anyway, thank you for the reviews, guys – it was very much appreciated, even if it was a pretty short chapter. So these are the folks I am thanking: Lizzy Sidle, DrusillaBraun, gabiroba, ibreak4CSI and Dardeile. Your kind words keep me writing!**

**So here's the follow-on from Chapter One; flick back if you can't remember how it left off, or keep reading and hope that you'll remember on the way. It's your life. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
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**Zwischenzug. Chapter Three. The Morning After**

- o -

**(Then)**

The rug was ruined after that. He threw it out into the dumpster on the corner the next morning and never got round to buying another one as long as he lived there. Though he didn't know it then, his rug-less living room would be the cause of Catherine commenting, in times to come, about how cold and sterile his apartment was.

On that first night, however, all Gil could do was pick up the passed-out girl's limp body and lay her down, on her side, on his couch. He rolled the rug up and put it by the door for disposal and then fetched a plastic bucket to put by her head in case she came to and puked some more. Then he sat in a chair opposite her and waited up all night, attempting to continue reading his textbook on the history of DNA evidence in forensic investigations. Or something.

Several times during the night, he considered picking her up and returning her to Eddie upstairs – the guy who was always having those loud parties. He was never truly sure why he didn't do that. His main reason, then, was that he thought that – if anything happened to her – nobody would notice, not at a party like that. What did it matter to him? He didn't know her. But somehow – he couldn't quite bring himself to take her upstairs, knock on the door, and just walk away.

She was very still all night – slept exactly as he'd left her – and, more than once, Gil got suspicious and would pause, listening closely to make sure she was still breathing. He wondered how he'd explain it to his supervisor if he ever had to call in a dead girl from his apartment.

By the time morning started to creep through the blinds, Gil's eyes stung and he'd long since stopped taking in whatever he was reading. He glanced at his watch which showed twenty-past six in the morning and remembered that lecture he wanted to attend. He doubted he would be able to stay awake through it, even if he did make it on time. Rubbing his tired eyes, he thought – Oh, well. At least he'd helped a coked-up girl survive another night – and found little victory in that thought.

He got up – went into the kitchen to make some coffee.

-

At half past six in the morning, Catherine stirred on an unfamiliar couch. Her shoulder twinged – stiff from a long night lying on it – when she shifted and it jolted her awake. Her eyes snapped open to an empty, tidy living room and, at that moment, she realised something was not quite right.

She sat up. Her head throbbed and she could still taste the rank acidic taste in the back of her throat which burned when she swallowed. She must've been sick last night; she didn't remember it – she didn't remember any of this.

Catherine was used to waking up after nights she didn't remember – she'd gotten used to it in eleventh grade – but there was usually a pattern to her confusion. She'd be in a friend's apartment, or a guy's bed or something – and all around her would be the wreckage of the previous night. That was fine – that was normal. This wasn't normal.

Here she was, alone in a strange apartment.

"Fuck," she whispered, as a thought occurred to her. Had she been raped?

It happened to a lot of girls she knew – especially the girls she worked with, but it had never happened to her. She paused, trying to control her panic. She didn't _think_ she'd been raped. She couldn't remember.

This was fucked up, she decided.

The apartment even _looked _liked it could've been Eddie's – the layout and size was kind of the same. But, gazing around the room, her eyes fell on the bookshelf stacked with crime novels, science textbooks and forensic journals. This definitely _wasn't_ Eddie's apartment.

A rattle of ceramic cups on a worktop sounded somewhere in the apartment. The kitchen, Catherine thought, logically. And if this was the same layout as Eddie's apartment… she worked out, scanning the apartment, then the kitchen would be through the door on the left…

She stood up – frowning her headache into submission – and took a step forwards.

The click of her heel on the un-carpeted floor almost made her jump. Too loud.

Bending down slowly, she quietly removed her high-heeled shoes and proceeded – silently stepping with bare feet – edging her way towards the kitchen. Whoever did this to her had better have a pretty damn good explanation, she thought.

-

In the kitchen, Gil poured his coffee and tried to massage his face awake. He still didn't quite know what he was going to do with the girl on the couch – he rarely had company as it was – let alone other people's trashed guests passed out in his apartment.

With a sigh, he moved to the fridge and grabbed the carton of milk.

It was then that, closing the door, did he see the girl – not passed out – but standing right there behind the fridge door.

"Aha!" she shouted.

"Holy crap!" Gil yelled and dropped the carton which exploded milk across both of their feet.

Still in shock, Gil found himself staring face to face with the very much awake and furious girl. Mascara had crumbled from her eyelashes and splattered in murky circles below her eyes; the creases in the sofa cushions had imprinted strange lines onto her cheek – but, despite her bedraggled appearance, she still stood there – eyes blazing – cold milk all over her shoeless feet. Gil didn't know what to say.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what the hell am I doing in your apartment? I don't know you. Who the hell are you?"

"Gil Grissom," he managed to say, finally finding his voice.

"Gil Grissom?" she repeated. "Right – that means nothing to me. What am I doing here?"

Gil's eyes widened – he could've asked the same question. "I don't know what you're doing here!" he told her honestly. "You just turned up – last night…"

The girl's eyes narrowed at him and her lip twitched in the beginning of a sneer.

"Really? I just walked in here, did I?" she snapped. "I don't buy it. What did you give me? Did you give me something? Did you drug me?"

This was getting seriously out of hand.

"No!" Gil said quickly. "No! Nothing like that! I don't _know_ what you took! You were… You – at the party. Eddie's party."

Watching this Gil Grissom guy struggle to get his words out made her almost feel bad for him – though she didn't hold back. If he had done anything to her, Catherine decided, she was going to let him have it. She wasn't going to let herself be taken advantage of – ever.

"Eddie's party? Okay – I remember that," Catherine nodded. "You were at Eddie's party? What next?"

"Me? No – no way," the guy shook his head. "I wasn't at Eddie's party."

Catherine frowned. This Grissom's story was all over the place.

"You _weren't_ at Eddie's last night?" Catherine asked. "Okay – well, how do I know you then?"

Gil took a deep breath – finally ordering last night into a comprehensible series of events.

"_You_ were at Eddie's party," Gil explained. "I wasn't. Eddie lives upstairs. This is my apartment and, last night, you knocked on my door – you were..." Gil searched for a tactful explanation. "You weren't thinking straight," he continued, delicately. "You barged right into my apartment, thinking this was Eddie's place – you went into all the rooms, looking for him, and then you came back into the living room, puked on my rug and passed out."

Catherine opened her mouth to speak but then shut it again. Gil Grissom's explanation sounded as though it could've happened. She remembered drinking a lot last night – and taking a lot of coke - and, now that he mentioned it – she remembered something of an empty apartment, calling out to Eddie and not finding him…

"Okay…" Catherine said slowly. "And what then?"

"I didn't know what to do with you," he said. "So I put you on my couch."

"That's all?" she asked.

"That's all."

She hesitated, uncertain. "You didn't…_do_ anything to me when I'd passed out, did you?"

Gil looked stunned for a moment. "What? No – no, of course not. I'd never… No."

Catherine stared at him closely and then nodded. She had been fully prepared to not believe whatever this guy told her, but she believed him – he didn't seem like the kind of guy she usually woke up to. He seemed… nice. Which was strange, for her.

"Okay." She said. "Okay. Fine."

And that was it.

The girl turned around and marched right out of the kitchen again, leaving milky footprints behind her. She grabbed her shoes from the living room and Gil heard her slam the front door shut as she left. He remained still in the middle of the kitchen for a few seconds after she'd gone.

At age twenty-five, Gil Grissom swore a lot more than he did when he got older – but still, as he stood there and the words, "Fucking hell", fell from his mouth – he didn't know that most of his cursing from now on would be because of that one unknown girl.

He blinked and tried to make sense of everything that had just happened. Then he got a cloth from the counter and began to mop up the spilt milk.

- o -


	4. A Truth, A Lie

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**I guess it must be moving a little slow right now, but trust me – it picks up. Anyway, thank you for the reviews, Teliko. x3, gabiroba, DrusillaBraun, MiniTeija and ibreak4csi! I find something tragic about me asking y'all for reviews, so I seem to stubbornly refuse to do it. Suffice it to say that I love receiving feedback and that it's always good to know that there are people out there who are reading. Another short present-day chapter. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
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**Zwischenzug. Chapter Four. A Truth, A Lie**

- o -

**(Now)**

"Catherine...?" Gil spoke quietly, after the silence became too difficult to sit in. He leant forwards on the sofa and tried to read her stony expression. It was impossible. "Cath?"

She turned to him. "What?" – short, and icy.

He thought he'd try a different tactic.

"Listen, we both know you're angry…" he told her gently. "I just want to know why so I can try and explain."

Catherine looked at him, dubious. "I'm not a child, Grissom," she said. "Don't talk to me like I'm a child, okay?"

"Okay, okay," he nodded. "But can we talk about this? Please?"

She studied his pleading expression and decided that they weren't going to get anywhere in her silence – he clearly wasn't going to give up too easily. Catherine sat back in her chair and sighed, relenting.

"Fine, Gil," she began. "How would you feel if you came into work one day and found out – from Jacqui, no less – that I was sleeping with Warrick or Nick?"

A small smile crossed his lips. "I think I'd feel sorry for Greg for getting left out."

Catherine's unimpressed look told him, too late, that this was no time for jokes.

"Do you think this is funny?" she demanded. She stared at him in disbelief as the smile fell from his face. "It's not funny, Gil."

And she stood up, furious, and walked out of the living room into the kitchen.

"Cath –" Grissom called out to her as she stormed away. "Cath, I'm sorry – wait."

He jumped up and went after her. She had her back to him in the kitchen, and poured a glass of water with forced nonchalance. The kitchen was different, too, Gil realised when he stepped inside. Painted a pale yellow rather than the light blue that he remembered. He didn't know she'd changed it.

"Catherine –"

She spun around and fixed him with that fierce glare that he'd seen so many times before – at least that was still the same.

"What, Gil? You wanted to know why, so I'm telling you why," she bit angrily. "And if all you can do is to sit there and make stupid jokes, then there's no point in you being here at all. I have better things to do with my time."

"No, I know – that was stupid of me," he said. "I'm sorry. But, in answer to your question – I'd be okay with it – if you were sleeping with Warrick or Nick or anyone. That'd be fine. It's not my business what you do."

Catherine looked him straight in the eye. She was gripping her glass so tightly, Grissom noticed, that her fingertips were white.

"Fine," she repeated to herself. "That'd be fine."

Pushing past him, she walked back out of the kitchen again without saying anything else. Gil raised his eyes to the ceiling – that had been a lie. Would he have been okay with it? Really? When he thought about it – he didn't think so. What would've been so wrong with telling her that? He didn't know. But something made him lie to her just then and now they were back where they had started – emotionally guarded.

She was back in the living room, sat staring at the wall again – not drinking the water she'd poured. Gil rubbed his hand over his face and leant against the kitchen doorframe, looking at her.

"What did you want me to say, Catherine?" he challenged, fed up. He waited for her to respond and she didn't. "Okay – so maybe I _wouldn't_ be okay with it. Not entirely. But it would have nothing to do with me anyway, so why would it _matter_ what I thought?"

At that point, Catherine looked at him. She folded her arms again.

"Why wouldn't you be okay with it?" she asked him coolly.

Gil turned his head into the wooden doorframe, frustrated. Looking back at her, she raised an eyebrow expectantly and he couldn't suppress a groan.

"You're making this difficult on purpose," he told her.

Catherine shrugged her shoulders. "Probably."

He sighed and wondered where he could even begin answering that question.

- o -


	5. The Reconciliation

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**All of my FFnet email alerts seem to have stopped happening, which is mildly distressing. Is this happening to anyone else? Well anyway – thank you to Teliko. x3 and angelaumbrello. It seems my audience has shrunk substantially in the past few weeks but no worries! On with the show! Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
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**Zwischenzug. Chapter Five. The Reconciliation**

- o -

**(Then)**

It took Catherine almost half an hour to walk home on blistering feet – without money for a taxi or bus back, the only thing she can even consider being grateful for is that, at seven o'clock in the morning, Vegas – stupidly located in the middle of a desert – hadn't yet hit its sweltering peak.

She fell into her apartment at twenty past seven to find it empty. Without knowing what to do, Catherine paced the old carpet of her rented bedroom floor. She opened and shut the fridge door three times and never picked anything out – an unappealing tie between a packet of processed ham slices or a furtive-looking fruit cup which had been there since she and Stephanie had moved in and both of them refused to touch. Then she went and stood under the shower for forty-five minutes, until the water ran cold and she leapt out, letting the lukewarm water overflow and make a small pond on the linoleum. She put old towels down on the bathroom floor and shut the door.

By the time Stephanie walked in through the front door at half twelve, Catherine had been lying across the sagging couch watching dust particles waltz in the beam of light between the curtains for hours. It would still be at least two years before she'd have a name to put to the dazed wanderings of the specks of dust. Brownian motion. And she wouldn't be able to remember whether she liked it more when it wasn't a nameable thing or not.

"Cat!" Stephanie's voice came from the door and Catherine sat up. "Where did you go last night?"

Catherine thought for a moment. "I don't really know, Steph – where were you?"

Stephanie laughed as she went into the kitchen for a glass of water.

"Eddie said he found me on the stairs at, like, one o'clock," Stephanie's voice sounded from the other room. "He took me back to the party – I remember that. We figured you'd gone home with some guy."

Catherine knelt up on the couch and, after a few seconds of silence, called out – "Did you sleep with him?"

Stephanie appeared in the kitchen doorway, sipping her glass of water.

"Who? Eddie?" she asked. "Sure."

With a curt nod, Catherine sunk back down into the couch and turned away. Stephanie frowned.

"Hey… Cath – are you pissed?" She sat down beside her friend. "We thought you'd gone off with another guy."

Catherine turned back to Stephanie with a smile plastered on her face.

"Yeah – I did," she answered. "I'm not pissed."

That was the first time that Catherine had never been entirely honest to Stephanie before. Sure, she'd twisted the truth with her teachers back when she was in school, and she lied outright to her mother almost daily – but not Steph. The weird part was – she didn't even know why; just some strange loner kid who lived on the third floor and proof of what she'd always known – that Eddie was a smooth-talking creep.

-

It took a long week of serious introspection before Catherine found herself walking back up the stairs in Eddie's building again.

She counted the doors again – eighth door down – raised her hand, and knocked.

She looked different, this time – perfectly made up, hair clipped back and freshly dressed in jeans and a low-cut top. Gil still recognised her, though, when he opened the door.

He smiled and said, "I think you've got the wrong floor. Eddie Willows is upstairs."

As Catherine felt a warm flush tinge her cheeks slightly, it occurred to her that it was odd – odd that she could get up on a dazzling-lit stage five, six nights a week and dance barely-dressed in a room full of strangers and yet, was embarrassed here – here, in an empty hallway, fully-clothed with just one man.

"No, this is the right one," she replied and had to force herself to look at his amused face. "I wanted to apologise, Gil Grissom."

"It's okay…" he began but trailed off, not knowing her name.

"Catherine," Catherine supplied. "Catherine Flynn."

He didn't say anything. Nodded and smiled. She stared in wonder – you'd have thought she just apologised for falling into him on the bus or something stupid like that, he was so indifferent.

"Anyway," she shook herself. "I really am sorry. For sort of walking into your apartment. And for puking on your rug. And then for yelling at you in the morning…"

Catherine couldn't understand it – his grin seemed to widen with every sentence she spoke – it was starting to freak her out, actually. She stopped and frowned.

"What's so funny?" she asked, slightly annoyed.

Gil laughed. "I don't know – I guess it sounds kind of funny when you put it like that."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really?" she said. "I think it sounds kind of stupid." And then, after a second, blurted, "I don't do that kind of thing often."

Catherine didn't know why she said that then. It was a lie – she couldn't remember the last time she'd gone a week without waking up to that acid burn in her throat and no recollection of the night before. And, normally, she'd defiantly stand by everything she did – as a kind of in-your-face 'fuck you' to everyone who dared to judge her.

"Okay," he said, simply – as though he wouldn't have cared if she'd told him how much coke she'd snorted in the upstairs bathroom and how much she made in tips last Sunday for stripping off to a hundred drunken men. Gil waited a while in the silence.

"Is that all?"

Catherine stared. "Yes." She said. "I guess so."

Gil shrugged his shoulders. "Okay." And watched as she slowly turned to go.

"No, wait, actually," Catherine decided, turning around again as he was closing the door. "That's not all."

Gil Grissom opened the door again and stood there expectantly, that small smile on his face again. Catherine didn't know what to say – that sort of _had_ been all – hadn't it? She said sorry – that's what she came to do.

"No, that's not all," she found herself saying. "Would you like to come out for a drink with me later? To say sorry?"

His eyebrow flickered upwards for a moment. She wanted to hate that stupid smile on his face – why was he smiling? This wasn't funny. He should be angry, or apprehensive or _anything _but amused by all of this.

"I thought you already said sorry," he said.

"Fine." Catherine snapped finally – what an ass! She'd asked him out, she'd tried to be nice and apologise and what does he do? He just laughs at her and says, 'Okay.' What kind of response is that? 'Okay'?? She'd passed out in his apartment, totally trashed – nobody just says, 'Okay' to something like that.

"Fine." She turned on her heels and began to stalk off.

Gil sighed – at least this Catherine girl had tried to say sorry – he hadn't expected to ever see her again.

"I didn't mean it like _that_," he called after her. Catherine kept walking. He rolled his eyes and tried again. "What time is 'later'?"

- o -


	6. A Small Battle For A Big War

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Aha! My email-alerting thing is working again – I'm getting all my story-alerts and the suchlike – _and_ of course, I'm getting your awesome reviews. Thank you very much to Gail, Peaky (hey! You've just reminded me that Kisangani Dreams still exists…), CSI-SCgirl, Teliko. x3, angelaumbrello, DruisillaBraun, Lizzy Sidle and Erica. Okay – so here we go, it's all angry over here; I imagine that getting into an argument with Catherine would be one of the most scary things – ever… Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Six. A Small Battle (For A Big War)**

- o -

**(Now)**

Why, then? He thought – why would it be so bad if he found out that Catherine was sleeping with Warrick or Nick? Not just Warrick or Nick, he realised – anyone – he felt that when he found out about any guy she dated. That Chris asshole…the Adam Novak guy… Eddie…

Gil frowned. But what was it, exactly, that he felt anyway? _"Jealousy?"_ he thought. That was ridiculous – Catherine was his _friend_. No, not jealousy. It couldn't be. He glanced at Catherine who watched him with this judgmental look across her face. And then he thought – _this isn't fair_ – and something in him snapped.

"This is stupid," he announced suddenly. "Why do I have to be the one explaining how I'd feel about a totally theoretical situation when you're genuinely angry, right now, about a real thing? You should be telling me why, Cath – why is it so bad that I'm sleeping with Sara? Dating her, even? Why? Why would that make you so pissed off?"

Catherine didn't miss a beat. "Because it's completely unprofessional and bad for the whole work environment," she replied, straight off.

"Bullshit!" Grissom snapped back before she'd barely got her words out and surprised them both. He took a breath and tried again. "If you really thought that, you'd be filing a complaint with Ecklie – not ignoring me in the car the whole ride to the scene or leaving the locker room as soon as I walked in."

Catherine didn't say anything. Had she really expected him to buy that 'work environment' crap that came out of her mouth? It was so weak that it didn't even have time to hang in the air before Gil was beating it down. Of course he wouldn't believe it – she couldn't even convince herself to believe it – so why did she say it? As defence? Some kind of neutral, emotionless lie to buy her some time? This was madness. Even without twenty-five years of knowing her behind him, Gil would've been able to see right through it, but Catherine had spent her whole life living behind defences until, even if she really tried, she couldn't find enough raw truth to even admit to herself.

So she exhaled slowly and thought of something else to say.

"Okay – fine," she said. "Think about it this way – ten years ago – not even ten, _five_ years ago, maybe – if you'd been dating someone – anyone – especially someone that I knew, you'd have told me, wouldn't you?"

He shrugged one shoulder awkwardly. "I don't know… probably."

Catherine arched an eyebrow. "You would've told me," she said, firmly. "And I would've told you anything that happened in my life. That's how we did it, Gil – that's how we _functioned_."

His expression softened as he remembered how it used to be – sitting outside on her doorstep and talking to her on her cell phone as she drove back home.

"So, I'm sorry," Catherine continued, "if you think that I have no right to be mad at you, or upset – but I came into work last night and had to find out about your two-month relationship with our co-worker by overhearing Jacqui telling Greg in the print lab."

Gil waited in the short silence and then – "So that's all?"

Catherine looked slightly affronted. "That's all? Yes that's all – that's twenty-five years amounting to nothing and all you've got to say is, 'That's all?' You're unbelievable, Gil."

He studied her face closely until she looked away, self-conscious.

"I don't think that's all," he said, decisively. "That can't be all, Cath – it's more that that. You'd never get this upset if it was really all you just said. I don't think that's it – not entirely."

"Well, Jesus Christ, Gil – if you weren't going to believe anything I told you, what's the point in you coming here at all?" she bit resentfully.

"I believe you," he said. "I just can't believe that's it. What's the real reason, Catherine – or are we not going to get anywhere with this?"

She sat up in her chair and her eyes flashed dangerously.

"No – no, you asked me a question, Gil, and I answered you," she replied in a voice that shook. "Now it's my turn to ask a question – why her? Why Sara?"

- o -


	7. The Stripper and The Scientist

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Y'see, I used to play these dinosaur games with my big brother and cousin Alexander, when my aunt and uncle lived in Spain. I don't know how accurate it is, that a T-Rex cannot see a stationary person – but we believed it anyway.**

**The reviews have been fabulous – thank you very much to Peaky, myfairlady, Lizzy Sidle, Anne Herbold, Teliko. x3, DrusillaBraun and especially ibreak4csi who went and reviewed three chapters in one evening. This is where the relationship starts getting good, guys – I promise. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Seven. The Stripper and The Scientist**

- o -

**(Then)**

'Later' was half past four in the morning at a 24-hour diner just off the Strip. Catherine had suggested it wryly as the earliest time she would finish work and he had nodded without any flicker of surprise or anything.

"I work nights, too," he said and didn't ask what she did for a living. In retrospect, Catherine still wasn't sure if she'd have told him the truth, like she always did, or if something else like, 'waitress' or 'secretary', would've come out of her mouth before she could even stop to think.

"Okay," she replied and pretended she didn't realise he was watching her as she walked back down the hall and headed home. She just didn't get this guy and it bothered her that she couldn't stop thinking about him that night at work. She clung to the pole, same as ever, and wondered what he'd say if he could see her then; she bet he wouldn't find it so funny.

-

At thirty-five minutes past four, Catherine ran all the way from The French Palace's employees' exit – nine blocks down the Strip – took a left and kept running until she reached the diner. She got there, out of breath and unsteady on her heels, at four thirty-eight. Gil Grissom was already there, leaning against the wall of the diner, and she would've bet all the money she'd made that night that he'd been waiting for exactly eight minutes.

That same smile spreads on his face again as he patiently waits for her to catch her breath.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Catherine gave a sardonic smile. "Apart from killing my feet, I think I'll survive."

He didn't quite follow. "Your feet?"

She balanced finely on one leg as she lithely raised the other one to remove her powder-blue strappy shoes; Gil had to clench his teeth to make sure his mouth was shut.

"Well, you try running in heels like these," she answered and looked at him – a whole three-and-a-half inches shorter without her shoes, now dangling by glittering straps from her index finger.

"You'd break your ankle," he said, glancing at the shoes hanging from her hand. "Why did you run?"

Catherine shrugged her shoulders. "I thought I would be late."

Without looking at his watch, Gil said, "You _are _late." And then added, "But I would've waited."

The first genuine, open smile that Gil had seen on her lit up Catherine's face and it made him almost glad that this beautiful stranger had barfed on his rug last week. Almost.

"Let's go inside, shall we?"

-

The waitress scribbled down an order for two beers and a plate of French fries and left the couple in the booth. Catherine cradled one of her shoes in her hands.

"I think I've wrecked them," she said. She turned it over and the heel came off in her palm. "I've definitely wrecked them."

"It was their time to go," Gil supplied, delicately. "They're in a better place now." And Catherine grinned.

As she searched in her mind for something smart to say in return, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a couple of frat boys slouched at the diner's counter, smirking and muttering amongst themselves. One of them snorted with laughter and nudged the other.

"Stripper!" he coughed behind his hand and then dissolved into laughter with his friend.

"No – no, she didn't look around – try again," the other one whispered.

In kindergarten, Catherine's best friend had been a freckle-faced boy with fiery red hair called Larry Walters – a dinosaur-fanatic who only ate sandwiches if their crusts had been cut off. He told Catherine that, if she ever was faced with a T-Rex, all she had to do was to stay very still – as still as she could – and it wouldn't be able to see her. They used to go outside and play dinosaur games where Catherine would stand as still as she possibly could while Larry roared and stomped about around her, pretending she was invisible.

At age seven, when her step-father – a foggy face in her memory – had his final fight with her mother before packing some clothes, kicking in the TV and walking out, Catherine had stood on the fourth stair in her pyjamas and stayed very still. Somewhere, in her subconscious, Catherine still – at nineteen years old – held onto the instinct to remain motionless when she wanted to be invisible and, as the frat boys sniggered down the necks of beer bottles, Catherine didn't move a muscle.

"Stripper!" the blond one tried again, and then took a daring step forwards. He laughed and hit his friend on the arm. "Dude – dude, it's definitely her!"

Gil looked up at Catherine – suddenly she had gone very still – her eyes fixed on his with a hardened expression on her face. He leant forwards slightly.

"Catherine? What's up?" he asked her and didn't notice the frat boys approach their table until they were standing beside Catherine with identical smug grins smeared on their faces.

"Hey, miss," the blond one began with false graciousness. "We just wanted to come over and say – we're big fans of your work."

His buddy gave that obnoxious snort again. "Yeah," he added. "My friend was...uh… _very_ satisfied with the lap dance you gave him earlier at the French Palace." He elbowed the blond one and smirked some more.

Catherine stayed frozen and Gil glanced between the frat boys and her, confused. Catherine just looked at him and prayed that Larry Walters' theory applied to both dinosaurs and people.

"Oh, wait – I'm sorry," the blond one feigned apology and jerked his thumb to Gil. "What is this? Your boyfriend?"

"What is he, like, a librarian?" the other one sneered and the pair of them laughed. Catherine paled – they could josh her all they liked – she was used to drunk guys being jerks to her all night – but Gil looked uncomfortable and she hated it. It wasn't fair. She'd genuinely tried to do something nice – say sorry for all the other crap she put him through – and here she was, doing it all over again.

The blond one leant down to her, close this time. He reached out his hand and tucked a strand of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. Catherine flinched at the contact. He brought his mouth close and murmured,

"Hey – why don't you ditch this guy and come have a good time with us?"

At that – seeing Catherine shrink back from the stranger who touched her – her wide blue eyes making her look more like a child than she'd ever looked before – Gil let himself act without thinking.

He reached into his coat pocket and yanked out his Crime Lab ID badge, slamming it onto the table top in front of the two frat boys.

"No, actually," he said with forced calm – never once taking his eyes off Catherine. "I work for Las Vegas Law Enforcement, so I would suggest that you leave her alone and get yourselves out of here before I call for one of my colleagues to accompany you, instead."

The pair of them eyed Grissom carefully and glanced at the badge on the tabletop. They nudged each other, muttering something darkly, and then sauntered out of the diner without another word to Catherine or Gil.

Once the diner door had swung shut again, Catherine breathed and sank down low in her seat.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Gil shrugged his shoulders. "It's okay."

She said nothing. It wasn't okay – it would've been okay with Eddie or any other guy she went out with on a regular basis – they would've loved the attention, would've played the role of macho boyfriend and threatened to knock the teeth out of them both. But Gil was different – she knew it – he hadn't even known what she did for a living until these guys had spat it out – ugly and incongruous and out there for them both to see.

"Are you really a cop?" Catherine asked quietly – trying for some neutral conversation.

He smiled slightly and picked up his badge. "No – a scientist – I'm doing an internship at the Vegas Crime Lab, though," he replied and flicked the badge with his finger. "This was just some cheap security thing they printed out from the receptionist's computer on my first day. They told me to laminate it myself."

Catherine tried to smile but couldn't.

"And don't worry," he told her after a pause. "I won't bust you for snorting coke the other week or anything like that."

Catherine's stomach sank. This was awful – he knew about the drugs, he knew about her stripping – he knew all of her worst qualities and their drinks hadn't even arrived at the table yet. She was an idiot – what did she think she was doing anyway? Asking him out for a drink – for what? To say sorry, or something ridiculous like that? If she'd really been sorry, she'd have left him alone and not dragged him into this stupid, messed-up world she lived in.

She bit her lip.

"I'm sorry, Gil – I've been so goddamn stupid." The words fell from her lips in a rushed confession and, sliding out from the diner's booth, she got up and tore out of the diner with no shoes on.

"Catherine – wait!" he called, but saw her run off back down the street. With a sigh, he dropped his forehead to the table and gazed numbly at the broken pair of shoes on the seat where she had once been.

- o -


	8. A FourLetter Word

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Thank you, little reviewers – you are the bomb (why does nobody say that anymore?) – so I am thanking Anne Herbold, ibreak4csi, LizzySidle, Dardeile, Teliko. x3 (yep, they definitely deserved a good ass-kicking), DrusillaBraun, Peaky, Erica and Chance2. This, by the way, is what I still truly believe led to that horrific scene at the end of Season Six – I mean, isn't that what drives the lonely after it's been too long? Hm. My GSR-shipping friend would very much not agree. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Eight. A Four-Letter Word**

- o -

**(Now)**

Catherine could see she'd hit a nerve with that one because Gil jumped to his feet.

"Why _not_ Sara?" he shouted, pacing the floor. "Why the hell not? What's your problem with Sara?"

And Catherine stood up, too – hated arguing with people if they were towering above her and yelling. Especially Gil – Gil rarely yelled in all the time she'd known him – she couldn't let him out-shout her.

"How about that you're her mentor? That you lectured her in college?" she countered. "She's just a kid with a crush, Gil; she doesn't know what she's doing!"

Gil crossed his arms. "Oh, believe me, she knows what she's doing," he muttered and then, on seeing the look upon Catherine's face, wondered why he said it.

"I can't believe you, Gil," she said. "When did you become such an ass? Sara's still your _student_, Gil – she reports back to you at the end of every case and she's still on the in-staff observation list for alcoholism..."

"Will you stop making this about work?" he interrupted. "The problem isn't about work – it's about you and me. If you're not going to admit to that, then I might as well go and forget about it."

He grabbed his jacket from the sofa and headed for the door. This would be the last time he tried to heal a rift between himself and Catherine, he decided. It was too hard; it shouldn't be this hard.

"Right, Gil," Catherine said, bitterly. "Just walk away – that's fine – that's what you do. Just as it gets too hard – when it starts to be something that actually might break through that emotionless exterior of yours – you just quit and go."

He stopped, one hand reaching for the door.

"That's not true," he replied.

Catherine scoffed. "Yeah – it is," she said. "Every time something or someone gets too close to you, you shut down and cut everyone off. I've almost gotten used to it, these past few years."

Gil's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. What was she doing? He watched as Catherine squared up to him – challenging him – daring him to leave and prove her right. Catherine had her hands planted on her hips as she stood in front of him and Gil could remember a time when he'd placed his own hands on those hips beneath the covers, exploring her whole body with kisses in the dark. And remembered countless more times of wishing he were doing it again.

It was basic reverse psychology, he realised, looking at her, to get him to stay and finish the fight with her.

"I let _you_ get close to me," he told her quietly. "And look at us now."

She shook her head. "No – don't blame this on me."

"I didn't think I did," he answered. She scrutinized his face and saw a kind of blankness in his eyes that angered her without knowing why.

"Why Sara, Gil? Just tell me," she demanded.

He blinked slowly and looked her dead in the eye.

"Why Sara?" he repeated and then, in a neutral voice, "Because she loved me."

She dropped the anger and the cynicism, then – he was being honest, she could see it.

Gil sighed when Catherine said nothing. He shouldered his jacket and opened the front door.

"Gil – wait," she called and he almost stopped, he really did – but he hated this and hated her for being the only person to dig deep enough to hurt him. Hated her and loved her – and hated her because he knew he could never _just_ hate her and leave her and walk away from her.

"Gil!"

Catherine stood on the doorstep, where he'd sat for her before. But Gil gritted his teeth and got into his car.

- o -


	9. The Stardust

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Insanely tired today (Insert cheery banter.) Thank you, reviewers – ibreak4csi, myfairlady, Erica, Anne Herbold (Ha! Well, how could I refuse that?), DrusillaBraun, Anaharath and Katie - I do mean it, even if I don't sound very enthusiastic. You guys are great. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Nine. The Stardust**

- o -

**(Then)**

The night after Catherine Flynn had run out on Gil Grissom in the Vegas diner, the twenty-five year old Crime Lab intern walked into the DNA lab with a pair of Catherine's broken shoes in hand. It was still sixteen years before Greg Sanders – then, a skinny six-year old with scabbed knees in San Gabriel, California – would be the graveyard shift's DNA technician and, when Gil walked in that night, it had been in the capable hands of Susan Cale – the first technician to have learnt Gil's name.

"Uh – Susan?" Gil tried to catch her attention as she swabbed the inside of a hockey player's mouth-guard. "How do I get onto the library of shoe tread patterns?"

Susan didn't look up. "Not my department, Gil," she said. "Hasn't your supervisor given you the access password for the lab's computers yet?"

He shuffled his own shoes quietly on the polished floors. "No – but…"

When she finally did look up, she raised a dubious eyebrow at the pair of powder-blue shoes in his hands. "Gil – if this is for a case then you've _gotta_ be wearing gloves, kid."

Gil grinned – Susan was always a lot easier on him than the other technicians – something about his quiet confidence and perceptive mind impressed her. The youngest coroner in L.A, she'd heard – and here he was, amiably doing grunt work for the CSI-1s.

"It's not for a case – I just… I'm trying to find something out," he told her. A smile rose on Susan's face.

"Oh, so this is like a Cinderella deal, huh?" she asked and laughed when he couldn't find an answer. She snapped off her latex gloves, stuck the DNA samples into the centrifuge and held out her hands. "Gimme."

Turning the shoes over in her hands, she nodded to herself.

"Yeah – these shoes won't be in the tread library, but I can tell you where you _will_ find them," Susan said. "Macy's – third floor. I swear I had to talk my daughter out of a pair just like these last weekend." She handed the shoes back to Gil. "Shame about the heel."

Macy's… Gil Grissom nodded uncertainly. "Oh – okay," he answered.

"You don't have a clue, do you?" Susan grinned. "It's on The Boulevard – just keep walking down. Near 'The Stardust'; if you hit Tropicana, you've gone too far."

"…near 'The Stardust'," Gil repeated to himself before dashing off, calling, "Thanks Susan!"

"Who's the lucky lady, Gil?" Susan yelled after him, but he was already gone; she just shook her head and chuckled to herself.

-

On Thursday night, there was a large bouquet of flowers and a gift-wrapped box delivered to the French Palace reception desk and moved to the dressing rooms. After the show, they were both stacked, cramped, on top of a locker belonging to Catherine Flynn – the youngest dancer at the Palace – along with a crowd of her fellow dancers, standing on the tips of their toes to try and read the name card.

"Someone's popular," Rachel told Catherine with a small smile as they passed each other in the wings.

Catherine didn't even have time to flick her head round with a, "Huh?" before she found herself in the dressing rooms, staring at the crowd around her locker.

"What's going on?" she asked, but Naomi grabbed her arm excitedly.

"Who's it from, Catty?"

Someone brought up a chair for her to stand up on, perching precariously on stilettos. She couldn't wipe the grin from her face – nobody had ever sent her flowers before. She reached into the bundle of stems and fallen petals and plucked out the card. Her eyes scanned the card and then she had to re-read it to make sure.

"Who's it from?"

"Forget it," one of the girls said and smartly whipped the card from Catherine's fingers to read aloud:

"_Dear Catherine,_

_I'm sorry for the other night._

_You're the only showgirl I ever wanted to see._

_Eddie xxx_"

And echoes of, "Aww!" sounded through the dressing rooms. Catherine smiled slightly and caught Steph's eye who grinned back – it must've been Stephanie's doing, going and talking to Eddie after seeing her reaction.

"What's in the box?" Someone hollered but Catherine stepped down from the chair and shook her head.

"I'll open it later," she said to disappointed groans.

"Five minutes, girls," came Jerry the Stage Manager's voice as he appeared and then disappeared in the doorway. The dancers clattered back to their tables to hurriedly change and reapply make-up. Catherine removed her earrings and, when she went to put them on her table, saw Eddie's note on the tabletop. _You're the only showgirl I ever wanted to see…_

-

Stephanie leapt straight into the shower as soon as they got home in the early hours of the morning, leaving Catherine alone in the kitchen with the Eddie's flowers and gift. The flowers stood up in the middle of the kitchen counter – oddly proud and imposing – and so bright in the dim light that they hurt Catherine's eyes. It was nice of Eddie, she considered. Thoughtful, even – to want to try and patch things up with her; and she didn't notice the sigh that escaped her lips as she slid her nail beneath the neatly folded wrapping paper.

The designer's name stamped on the lid of the box caught her breath in her throat for a moment. Tentatively, she lifted the lid and saw, nestled on top of the tissue-paper covered shoes – a neatly penned verse from a page torn out of a jotter.

"_From the death of the old, the new proceeds,_

_And the life of truth from the death of creeds."_

_ John Greenleaf Whittier_

Catherine blinked numbly – this wasn't Eddie. Not this one… She tore the tissue paper back and saw a brand new pair of shoes, identical to her lost and gone pair. Her mouth fell open and she turned the box inside-out looking for anything else – another note – Gil Grissom's name. Nothing.

She sat back and looked at the shoes as they stood perfectly in front of her. This could only have been Gil. Gil, who picked her up and let her sleep on his couch – who waited for her outside the diner – who called after her when she ran. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the other side of the paper scrap and couldn't stop the smile on her face when she read the calm addition:

_Try not to run in these ones._

"Oh my God!" Steph exclaimed as she emerged from the bathroom with her hair twisted up in a towel. Catherine quickly snatched the note away into her pocket and Stephanie picked up one of the shoes, gazing at them in awe. That was the thing, Catherine realised then. To Eddie, she was the only showgirl for him – but to Gil, she was just a girl. A girl who worked nights like he did and turned up late to meet him.

Steph gasped. "Cat, these are, like, $160 or something; Eddie must be really something."

Catherine smiled faintly and nodded.

"He sure is," she replied – counting twice in one week that she'd lied to Stephanie.

- o -


	10. A Truce

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**And here's some more – this one's particularly short, but there are a few really long chapters coming up, so I guess it all balances out in the end. Thank you to the reviewers of chapter nine, ibreak4CSI, DrusillaBraun, Liz00, Anne Herbold, gabiroba, Anaharath, Lakeland, Peaky, Erica and Teliko. x3. Update coming soon, but for now – Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Ten. A Truce**

- o -**  
**

**(Now)**

From inside the car, sat behind the steering wheel, Grissom could see Catherine still stood on the doorstep. He reached his hand out to turn the keys in the ignition but didn't. What had been the point of this at all? He'd come over to try to explain and they'd ended up at each others throats. It never used to be this way – even when things were complicated, they never fought this hard.

After a few moments, he saw Catherine uncross her arms, step off the doorstep and walk slowly down the driveway towards him. It amused him to think of how they approached each other like one might approach a dangerous animal, but he looked at her and said nothing as she opened the car door and climbed in beside him.

"What's happened to us?" she murmured with a small smile.

Gil glanced across at her and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he replied. "We used to be… close."

She turned to face him. "I miss that," she said honestly.

"Me too."

Gil sat quietly in their little sealed-in space and smiled at the moment of peace between them.

"We still have to talk, don't we?" he realised. Catherine stretched against the seat and sighed.

"Yep."

"Okay," he said. He'd spent twenty-five years with Catherine learning to be strong enough to take everything she dealt him – he reckoned he could last out the day if it meant they could still have moments like this – tiny glimpses of how it used to be between them before they were divided by tension and unspoken hurt.

"But not now," she said in a decisive voice. She softly touched his arm. "Come inside, Gil," she asked him. "We can make some breakfast or something."

He breathed a laugh and relaxed a little.

"Is it safe to be in a room full of frying pans and knives and things together?" he joked lightly.

"I think we can risk it," she said, smiling. Her hand squeezed his shoulder a little and he knew that, when it came to trying to fix things with Catherine, there would never be a 'last time'.

"Okay." Gil opened the car door and got out. He stood on the driveway for a moment or two and turned his face up to the growing morning light that swelled orange and pink at the end of her road. Then he locked his car and followed Catherine in, shutting the door behind him as she clattered pots and pans in the kitchen.

- o -


	11. The Butterfly Catcher

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Happy Easter, folks – if that's your kinda thang. Anyway, I wanted to say thanks a lot for the reviews for the last chapter – I hadn't really expected much, seeing as it was possibly the shortest chapter – ever. But thank you, ibreak4csi, Teliko. x3, DrusillaBraun, myfairlady, gabiroba, Anne Herbold, Erica and Daydreamer1127. Those of you who write also will know how much a good review can be an incentive to write, so I guess it's easy to see how I can reel chapters out quickly (compared to my other fics…) Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

**PS – Spotlight on, "After Hours" by Angsty Miss. Good fic; not enough supporters!**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Eleven. The Butterfly-Catcher**

- o -

**(Then)**

Catherine wore her new shoes when she went to see Gil Grissom. It was the first time she'd worn them out since she'd been given them – couldn't quite bring herself to wear them to work at the Palace, or to another sprawling intoxicated party at an apartment somewhere else just off the Strip. These were different shoes – the first pair had been bought for her by Sam Braun – a friend of her mother's who'd featured heavily in her childhood. But Sam was a casino owner and dated her mother infrequently after seeing her as a showgirl on his stage – it didn't matter if shoes he'd given to her stepped into darker parts of Vegas with her.

This time was different – Gil Grissom spent his meagre intern's wages on $160 shoes – and Catherine couldn't just let them hang onto her feet as she knelt in strangers' bathrooms to snort lines from the lids of toilet seats.

So, aside from wearing them in her bedroom, walking backwards and forwards in front of the mirror and trying to form an adequate thank-you in her mind, on a Saturday morning – exactly two weeks after first meeting Gil – she wore them back to his apartment block and knocked on his third-floor door.

When Grissom opened the front door, he looked first at Catherine's face and then to her shoes.

Smiling, he said, "Nice shoes."

Catherine shrugged her shoulders, ignoring the fact that the only man to have sent her flowers was asleep in bed, one floor above her.

"They're okay," she told Gil. "They make good running shoes."

Gil laughed. "So they fit okay, I guess?" he asked and Catherine beamed, nodding her head and letting her strawberry blonde fringe fall across her eyes.

"They're perfect," she said earnestly, tucking her hair behind her ear so she could look at him with wide open eyes and let him know she truly meant it. "Thank you, Gil. It's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

Gil Grissom felt a blush rise in his cheeks and he shrugged his shoulders like an awkward teenager.

"It was nothing, really," he mumbled and bashfully looked to the floor where he saw his socked feet – one blue, one yellow – shuffle slightly in front of Catherine's.

Growing up with a deaf mother and a consequent aversion to loud noises, an eight-year old Gil Grissom used to enjoy, most of all, catching the butterflies that stopped to taste the flowers in the garden of his Californian home. He remembered watching them as they fluttered in glass jars and beat their wings, wanting to fly.

As Catherine leant closer to him in the doorway, Gil felt his heart – for a moment – feel like those butterflies must've done – the quiet thumping of their powdery wings against the glass.

"It was $160," she said directly and added, with a hint of sourness, "$160 for a stripper who barfed on your rug. Some might say you've been totally ripped off."

Gil looked at her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. Catherine blinked, surprised.

"Not really," she decided eventually. "I just wish I didn't keep putting us both into situations I end up apologising for."

He considered this and Catherine thought he was about to respond – maybe offer her advice she wouldn't take or console her of something he knew nothing about. Instead, when he opened his mouth, he said –

"Have you had breakfast, yet? Only, I was just about to make something."

And then Gil didn't even wait for her response, but walked away back into his apartment, to the kitchen. Catherine stared at the space where he'd once been. This guy was like nobody she'd ever met before. After a moment's hesitation, she let her brand new shoes carry her indoors and quietly shut the door behind her.

-

Gil Grissom could make the best scrambled eggs that she'd ever tasted – and Catherine, apparently, could barely work the toaster.

"I used to cook a lot for my mother and I when I was in high school," Gil offered as part explanation, part consolation when the toaster began spewing acrid smoke and the toast leapt up – blackened and scorched. Catherine groaned and almost burnt her fingertips dropping the slices of toast into the bin.

"Try again?" she suggested and Grissom nodded, stirring the eggs in the pan.

"Definitely."

And he watched out of the corner of his eye as Catherine peered closely at the timer on the toaster, determined to get it right this time. With a smile, Gil reached out his hand and turned the timer for her.

"It doesn't take as long as you think," he advised brightly, but almost jumped at the contact when his fingers met Catherine's in pressing the button.

He hoped he wasn't falling for her, he thought to himself as he returned to briskly stirring the eggs, because Catherine was painfully out of his league and in an entirely different social climate to him. It would be a big mistake, he realised – letting himself fall in love with Catherine Flynn.

-

Grissom watched, oddly fascinated at Catherine swirling Tabasco, ketchup and a little bit of black pepper at the side of her plate with a fork. She didn't say anything – intently brushed her scrambled eggs with the fork leaving four equidistant red streaks across her breakfast. By the time she got round to eating it, Gil had forgotten entirely about his own breakfast.

"What?" Catherine asked when she looked up to see him watching her. He smiles slightly to himself and shakes his head, looking back down to his plate.

"Nothing," he said and Catherine grinned.

"It tastes good!" she insisted.

"I didn't say anything," he replied, with eyes that sparkled at her. She raised an eyebrow but wanted to laugh, all the same. It was odd – how natural it could be, being back here and talking to him after she'd left the last couple of times either angry or mortified.

"I didn't intend to be a stripper," Catherine began suddenly and Gil looked at her – all seriousness now. She blushed slightly and wondered why those words came out of her mouth. Something about being around Gil Grissom drew things out of her – a kind of self-awareness and openness that she'd never had with anyone else before. It was strange, she thought, because he never asked.

"It's not like I aimed to become this," she continued. "It just sort of happened." She paused. "It pays the rent. And I'm _good_ at it – it's the only thing I know."

Catherine stared at him, eye to eye across the breakfast bar of his kitchen. Then she looked away and quietly returned to eating. Gil said nothing.

As he cleared the plates away, after silence between them, he picked her plate up and stopped to say,

"I think you know a lot more than you give yourself credit for."

Catherine watched him turn away and rattle the crockery in the sink. She listened to the water running in the sink and then pulled her unused napkin towards her. Plucking a pen from the pot on the counter, she wrote out her name – Catherine Flynn – in looped, bold letters, followed by her phone number.

When Gil Grissom turned back around to her, she slid it towards him.

"Thank you," she said. "This was… really nice. Maybe we can do it again sometime?"

Gil glanced at the napkin and fished in his pocket for an old business card with bent corners. He scribbled his number on the back of it and handed it to her.

"I would like that very much," he told her honestly. Catherine turned it in her fingers and looked at it – "Gil Grissom", it read, "Coroner" – and gave a Los Angeles address in small print along the bottom.

She looked back up at him and smiled a smile that lit her eyes with a kind of amusement that Gil had only seen before in the eyes of his 1st Grade teacher when he'd asked her what was beyond the Solar System.

"There's a lot that I don't know about you, Gil Grissom," was all that Catherine said. She hesitated, where she'd never hesitated before, and leant forwards to kiss him on the cheek; an electric fluttering of butterfly wings in a jam jar.

Gil could still feel where her hand had lingered on his shoulder long after she'd left – it led to shivers running down his spine when he stood under the shower and unexpectedly passionate dreams when he slept that afternoon before his graveyard shift.

- o -


	12. A Step Too Far

**Disclaimer: They're not mine.**

**Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Hey guys – what's with the hardly-any-GCR updates? I don't know – this fic was up as the most recent GCR since I put Chapter Eleven up, which feels like ages ago. Probably some technical hitch, I hope. We can't be losing our GCR writers like this… But thank you, reviewers! Thank you Teliko. x3, DrusillaBraun, Anne Herbold, Forsaken Goddess, Angsty Miss (no problem, really), ibreak4csi, Anaharath, Erica, Sleepinghyunny, Katie, Peaky (on holiday? Have a good time, anyway!) and Daydreamer1127. Turns out most of you liked it when they got on well so… huh… apologies. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

**PS – Spotlight on, "After Hours" by Angsty Miss. Good fic; not enough supporters!**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twelve. A Step Too Far**

- o -

**(Now)**

Tabasco, ketchup and pepper became just a matter of course for Gil when he made breakfast for Catherine – one of those things that you just come to know about somebody you've spent your life with, just as he knew how she'd answer the phone or how she'd say a particular sentence – the way she'd narrow her eyes a little and bare her white teeth when she argued for something she was passionate about.

She worked around him, in the kitchen – softened by his curiously personal confession about Sara, but not enough to work alongside him as she usually did – symbiotic and fluid. They were polite – civil with one another; when Grissom had needed to get something out of a drawer she was standing in front of her, he courteously asked her to move, where before he'd have simply moved her gently out of the way himself – hands resting on her waist perhaps just a little longer than necessary. Catherine had never really noticed, never minded – human contact kept her alive – her life was physical, personal and social. For Grissom, it had been different – Catherine had been the first, perhaps only, person he had that level of unspoken intimacy with.

Used to have.

He met her eyes as she stepped aside to let him grab a wooden spoon from the drawer. Then they both looked away.

Catherine stirred a few drops of milk into Gil's coffee without thinking – her hands knowing exactly how much. She watched the swirl of the hot coffee dance in the centre of the mug and put the teaspoon down with a quiet clink.

"Do you love her?" she asked suddenly, not looking at him.

He sighed inwardly; he'd been wondering how long it would take for them to get back onto the argument.

"Well?" she pressed when he said nothing. "Do you?"

Exhaling slowly, he gripped the saucepan handle with white knuckles.

"What does it matter to you, Catherine?" he said, through gritted teeth. He didn't want to start this up again – he didn't want to do this all over again, but his avoidance of the question just incensed Catherine further.

"Of course it matters," she snapped. "I bet it matters to _Sara_." And even she was surprised at the unexpected bitterness that came out of her.

Gil raised an eyebrow. "I asked what it mattered to _you_. Not to Sara."

"I was simply curious as to whether or not something like 'love' could feature in your uninvolved life, Gil," she said coolly, cruelly.

Gil froze. That had been out of line – who was Catherine to say something like that to him? Sure, he'd been criticised for his indifferent before – unfeeling, unreachable – but for Catherine to suggest something like that… _Catherine_. Catherine – who was the only woman he'd ever allowed close enough to him – close enough to love her. Close enough to _tell_ her.

He clenched his jaw as hurt turned to anger.

"Love is not the same as lust, Catherine," he replied in a low voice he could barely control. "Surely you're living proof of that – screwing your way through a marriage only to find out it was ultimately meaningless."

Gil had raised the bar – met and upped her own snide comment; Catherine was shocked.

She stared at him for a very long time and Gil felt his insides grow cold – wondering if all hell would break loose now. He thought for one moment that she was going to yell at him, or throw something at him, the way that her eyes blazed furiously above the hard line of her mouth. But then, her expression changed – quickly, he couldn't quite make it out – and she turned away sharply, her hair falling across her face.

The next thing he knew, Catherine had walked out of the kitchen and was slamming the back door shut as she stormed off into the garden. Gil unfroze, stirred the breakfast before it burnt, and then began to feel very guilty.

- o -


	13. The Thought Of It

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Alert errors, I hear – this is a thing a lot of you mentioned – and hey, yknow, for alert errors and suchlike, nine reviews for a 659-word chapter is not too shabby. In fact, it's pretty awesome. So I owe many genuine thanks to Forsaken Goddess, Anne Herbold, Erica, Katie, myfairlady, DrusillaBraun, KekeWillows, ibreak4csi and Teliko. x3. I'm hoping to hit the mighty 100 with this chapter and, with you guys' dedication and sheer niceness, I reckon it totally can be done. Here it comes… Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Thirteen. The ****Thought Of It**

- o -

**(Then)**

At the age of twenty-two, Gil Grissom had been the youngest coroner in Los Angeles history, but moved to Vegas a few months after his twenty-fifth birthday (August the 17th) to take the CSI internship. To become a criminalist – to piece the puzzle together – was what he'd truly wanted to do and, even if the pay was much less than he got in LA, it wasn't every day that you got the opportunity to work for the second-best crime lab in the country.

"What about the first-best?" Catherine asked, smiling as she sipped her drink.

"We don't like to talk about them," he replied with a grin.

These are some of the things that Catherine found out about the elusive Gil Grissom as she found herself coming back to him, day after day, week after week.

At first, they'd have a reason – come over for breakfast, for dinner – come over to watch a movie – come over, if you're in the neighbourhood. After a while, Catherine would just turn up there and they stopped needing reasons to see each other. Some days, they barely spoke and Grissom would read a magazine or write up case notes, while Catherine painted her nails or flicked through one of his forensic textbooks for want of something else to do.

On the night when Gil Grissom came back, having been given the position of CSI-1 at the Vegas Crime Lab, he picked her up and spun her around. Catherine had laughed, but had been surprised at his unexpected show of affection; she'd wondered if he would sleep with her that night, but he didn't.

They went out to a bar and both drank a lot. When he walked her back to her apartment, she took her chance in the dimly-lit hall, pulled him towards her and kissed him, arms holding him close. Gil sobered then, feeling their tongues crash together, feeling her breasts pressed up against him, feeling his hands wander further down her body than he'd intended. He'd jumped back from her, that night.

"I don't want to do this drunk, Catherine," he told her in a slurred voice. She meant more to him than that. This would be a mistake.

But all Catherine heard was, "I don't want to do this."

She looked at him hard.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," she said coldly, went inside and shut the door. Gil had wanted to run in after her and leave his stupid ideas at the door – but he didn't – and often wished he had.

Things would definitely have been different then.

-

Catherine fell into a drunken sleep after that and didn't really remember that night, but could hazily taste his lips on hers and somewhere recalled his arms around her waist in her waking moments. She lay in bed the next morning and remembered little pieces – a kind of hurt in Gil's eyes as she shut the door, the smell of alcohol between them, hearts racing in the doorway.

Catherine woke up alone that morning and wondered why. On some days, she'd think that Gil barely kept himself from her – that it was all he could do not to sweep her up and carry her to bed. But then, on other days, she'd feel a sense of distance between them, as though they could only ever have been friends. It confused her since Catherine was always the one playing guys – always sure of her own position in a relationship in order to keep control of it. Control never seemed to come into it with Gil Grissom; it never seemed like a controllable thing.

The hurt on his face flashed across Catherine's memory again. God – she hoped she hadn't ruined anything between them.

She swung her bare legs out of bed and walked unsteadily towards the kitchen to get a glass of water for the stale alcohol taste in her mouth. Sipping the water, Catherine leant her forehead against the cold fridge door. She would go and see him once she'd had a shower, she decided, and they would pretend nothing had happened and it would be just the same as ever.

And it was.

-

"Do you know a Jimmy Tadero?" Catherine spoke out loud as Grissom pored over a book of famous serial murder cases, their trademarks and their copycats.

Gil didn't look up. "Uh… who?" he asked distractedly.

Catherine glanced across at him from where she lay across the sofa, legs stretched across him and her head hanging over the edge. She'd been idly examining split ends in her hair for an hour or so, lounging on Gil's couch while he read his hard-back book and didn't complain about the fidgeting of her feet in his lap.

"Jimmy Tadero," she repeated, deciding to be patient with his lack of attention this time. "He's a cop."

"Officer Tadero," Gil said – the name speaking out of his subconscious mind as he carried on reading the book; he was onto the section about The Düsseldorf Vampire murders in the early 1900s.

"Sure," Catherine shrugged her shoulders. "Do you know him?"

He turned the page and still didn't look up. "Yeah – a bit."

Catherine suppressed a sigh and shot a pointed look at Gil who didn't see it.

"He comes by the Palace quite a lot," she continued. "Hangs around backstage – but he's a nice guy; I think he has a bit of a thing for Stephanie."

"Uh huh?" Gil uttered. Catherine raised an eyebrow – he wasn't listening. Well, she thought, if he wasn't listening, then it didn't matter what she said.

"Well, anyway," she went on. "We talk quite a lot now, about the stuff he sees in his work and cases and… stuff." She paused and studied his reaction. Gil turned a page.

"Anyway – I never realised how interesting it is, yknow? It sounds like a really great job – not as a cop, but doing what you do," Catherine hurried through her words – almost embarrassed by the thoughts she was voicing. "I mean, I know I was never much good at science at school – or anything really – I guess I never really tried, but I know I can't be a dancer for ever. And I don't think I want to be. I thought – if I saved my money and if I really worked – then maybe I could go to college and maybe try to really make something of myself…"

She trailed off at the end of her whirlwind speech and watched Gil carefully. He made no change of expression; he hadn't heard her and she couldn't decide whether if that was a good thing or not.

It sounded stupid – her personal thoughts out there – ridiculous for a stripper who dropped out of a school to want to do something that Gil Grissom – youngest coroner in the LA history – was aiming towards, too. Perhaps a part of her had thought that it might not have sounded so stupid.

"I don't know…" she mumbled, shuffling her feet in his lap and looking away now. "I guess it's sort of dumb…"

Gil looked up from his book and then, pausing, turned to look at Catherine as she returned to examining her cuticles.

"It's not dumb," he said.

Catherine looked at him, surprised. And then blushed slightly. "Well…"

"No, it's not," he said.

She looked dubious. "Gil – I'm not _you_. I was cutting classes since I was twelve and never once got a good report in high school." But Catherine noticed that Gil did not change his expression and did not look away from her with his bright, blue eyes.

"The bad decisions you made as a kid don't have to define you," he told her. "They don't mean that you're not smart and they definitely don't mean that you can't still learn."

He stared at her for a moment or two and then looked back at his book.

"You're intelligent, Catherine," he said to the pages. "You could achieve almost anything." And that was all.

It took a while for Catherine to truly take in what he'd said – even longer for her to believe it. Her – Catherine Flynn – who'd never been called 'smart' (unless 'smartass' counted) and had never been expected to become anything admirable, anything respectable. _Intelligent_. Really?

A big smile broke onto her face and she bounded across the couch to kiss him. Gil grinned in surprise when he felt her lips against his cheek and watched her skip off towards the kitchen.

Later on that night, as she danced on stage again and paraded her body under bright lights in front of shadowed strangers, she felt that smile tug at her mouth again as Gil's words echoed in her head. She stared out into the crowd with a welling happiness somewhere near her lungs and thought about how she might one day truly _be_ somebody.

- o -


	14. A Touch

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Look at you guys! Taking me to and beyond 100 reviews… (Winner for 100****th**** review, by the by, was Anne Herbold, I believe – sorry Liz00!) So I really owe you all of these thanks to ibreak4csi, supertasticgirl, Liz00, Anne Herbold, DrusillaBraun, gabiroba, myfairlady, Erica, Peaky, Katie, FoxyWombat and janedoe144. Also many thanks to Angsty Miss – beginning at the beginning – I hope all y'all are still checking out her fic, "After hours". To all you who have just joined us – welcome! To everyone else – your endurance is awesome and I thank you for it. Now – on with it. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Fourteen. A ****Touch**

- o -

**(Now)**

The sun was halfway up as Catherine sat on the patio outside and sighed at the pinkish sky. It wasn't being reminded of her failed marriage that got to her, she thought, it was that Gil would use it against her when all he'd ever been before was supportive. She hugged her knees to her chest. That was what had hurt.

Maybe it had been unnecessarily cruel for her to have accused him, as she had so often done, of being unfeeling – incapable of love. She didn't know why she'd said it. But Gil's comment had cut through all that and hit her deeper.

The fact that she'd had a divorce didn't bother her and, even, after time, the thought of Eddie cheating on her failed to sting as much as it once had. It was just the way Gil had said it – marking it out as the one event Catherine still couldn't whole-heartedly stand by and swear she didn't regret. She'd married Eddie because he'd asked her, because she was pregnant with his child and because she thought it would make her complete – like the real family she'd still felt too young to have. Oh – and the sex had been great.

None of those reasons, apparently, were enough to hold them together and Eddie proved himself, time and time again, to be the Grade A jerk she'd always known he was, deep down. But it was different with Eddie, because every screw up with Eddie carried itself on as a screw up with Lindsey – just one more time Catherine had failed to hold it together for her daughter. Gil knew that; Catherine had told him on countless occasions when she'd fought back tears in a darkened living room and confessed all her fears to him in the hope of reassurance – which he always gave her, unswervingly.

But Gil _knew_. And this time, instead of using his intimate knowledge of all her deepest fears and confessions to help her and comfort her – like he had always done – he'd used it to hurt her like no-one else could have done.

He was a completely different person now.

Catherine shivered outside and wished she'd thought to bring a jacket when she'd stormed outside. Never mind.

At the sound of the patio doors sliding open, Catherine didn't look around. Gil approached quietly and sat down beside her – leaving a safe gap between them.

"I brought you some breakfast," he said quietly. "And your coffee." He placed the mug and bowl down beside her on the concrete as a peace offering.

Catherine looked at them and then at him. He looked almost sorry for what he'd said, but Catherine wasn't ready to forgive him. Without saying anything, she picked up the coffee mug and laced her fingers around the warm porcelain.

"I don't know what to say, Catherine," Gil said.

Staring hard at the bottom of the garden ahead of her, Catherine stiffened her jaw and Gil saw the tension lock itself into her bare shoulders. He wanted to reach out and press his palms to those rigid shoulders, but knew how that would end.

"You knew just how to hurt me, didn't you?" Her voice rose up into the morning air and hung there for them both to feel.

Gil's lips began to form words before he spoke them.

"So did you."

A jerk ran through Catherine's right arm and a frown he couldn't see cast shadows on her face. She bit her lip.

"It's not the same," she told him.

Maybe it wasn't, Gil thought – but she'd hurt him too, more times than she'd even been aware of.

He looked at her, sat out on the cold patio floor and couldn't think of anything else to say to her. Instead, he stood up and moved to go back inside. Before he did, a thought occurred to him and he removed his jacket, draping it around her shoulders.

Catherine didn't speak and didn't move but felt his hand brush her skin as he turned around and went back inside, sliding the door softly shut. For Eddie, for Lindsey, for herself and Gil – perhaps – but maybe just for no reason at all, Catherine wanted to cry.

- o -


	15. The Weight

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Several apologies for the lateness of this chapter. I do not know why. And here it is. I suspect some of you will yell at me about the ending. You'll have to trust me. You will. So I'm gonna thank ibreak4csi, FoxyWombat, Anaharath, myfairlady, gabiroba, Teliko. x3, Lady M, Erica, Peaky and DrusillaBraun. And then I'm going to just let you read it. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Fifteen. The ****Weight**

- o -

**(Then)**

Almost as a testament to Gil's faith in her intelligence, Catherine learned to sign the alphabet within five minutes. They sat facing each other, cross-legged on the carpet of his bedroom floor and watched each others' hands intently, knees touching. The curtains were drawn at eleven am – their night-working eyes unable to stand up to fierce daylight – and every day together felt like a secret cocoon of time that nobody else would ever be able to understand or touch.

C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E

She signed it with all the speed and grace that he might've expected from someone who'd been learning for five years, not five minutes. He smiled at her slender fingers, slipping into formation, and wanted to feel them against his skin. If Gil had been another person – if he could've changed who he was, just for a second – he would've closed that achingly small gap between them in a heartbeat and never looked back. But Gil was a thinker, and over-thought his every move until the physicality of everything held an exhausting emotional weight.

Eddie or another man could've screwed Catherine against her front door within minutes of a 'Hello' – but Gil never was that man, and could never be – even when, in moments of painful indecision, he wished he could just act without thinking and disregard all consequences and feeling. He couldn't do it.

"Why did you learn?" Catherine asked his hands as they spelt the word, 'H-O-M-E.'

Gil paused.

"I grew up with a deaf mother," he explained, realising this was the first time he'd ever told anyone about this since the 8th Grade when he brought a friend home from school on one rare occasion. "Otosclerosis – a gradual loss of hearing until you're profoundly deaf. It's hereditary."

"Oh," said Catherine and let her hands fall into her lap. "Are you scared you're going to get it, too?"

He thought about this for a while. Scared? Perhaps. The thought of a life of silence, hanging over his head like a heavy blanket, ready to fall, smothering all sounds… But Gil never really saw it like that – life with his mother hadn't been life with a disabled person – his mother was dynamic, cooked well and made gently sarcastic comments about current affairs.

The only thing he feared now was the thought that he might one day never again hear Claudio Arrau play Debussy, or the oddly satisfying bleep of AFIS when it cemented a case with a match, or hear Catherine's bare feet touch the tiled floors of his apartment in the early hours of the morning as she wrestled with the coffee machine - the sounds that put a smile on his face.

"A little, maybe," he told her eventually. "There are treatments you can have now – operations before it becomes too pronounced. As long as you catch it early."

Catherine nodded slightly and smiled at him, her white skin glowing a soft red from the light through the scarlet curtains. She had a strange look on her face, Gil noticed, and waited to see what would come next.

"Let's see if you can hear this," she said decidedly and knelt up.

The fringe of her cut-off denim shorts brushed his fingertips as she leant in and moved her mouth so close to his ear he could feel her breath. Gil, himself, didn't breathe – couldn't move – didn't want to miss a second while his heart pounded madly in his chest.

Then, so quietly that even Catherine couldn't be sure if she'd actually said the words or simply thought them, she whispered in his ear, _"I think I could fall in love with you, Gil Grissom."_

Gil felt as though a balloon had been inflated in his chest somewhere and an electrical shiver ran through his body. Then he furiously tried to force it away.

'Could' was okay. 'Could' was workable. But Gil feared that, when it came to Catherine, he already _had_ fallen in love.

Catherine rocked back on her heels – watched a smile light in Gil's blue eyes for a few seconds and then watched him frown it away. She didn't know why. Why did he do this? She couldn't understand him – within one day, he could go from being the kind of guy she was sure she could spend her life with to being Gil Grissom – workaholic, CSI and, as Catherine strongly suspected, the most closed-off, unfeeling, robotic man she'd ever met.

With an irritated sigh, Catherine stood up and walked away from him, slamming the bedroom door shut. Catherine Flynn had a lot of passion – practically lived and breathed on it; Gil couldn't even kiss her cheek in the cocoon of his bedroom.

He groaned as he heard her keep walking, out the front door. He hated himself for this – hated, hated, _hated_ himself. His hands clenched and, in his frustration, he dug his forehead into the carpet in front of him, pounding the ground with his fists. How hard would it have been to kiss her, right there and then, as she leant towards him? How hard would it have been to step up and be a man, and forget the terrifying possibility of rejection?

For almost anyone else, Gil realised, it would've been easy. But for him, it wasn't. How could he risk losing Catherine – a girl his social perceptions and education had taught him was so very beyond him – as his closest friend to stupid sexual urges? How could he take a chance like that when he'd only ever acted in certainty?

Gil just couldn't.

-

"Tell me about your work, today," Catherine spoke up spontaneously as she sat on the living room floor and counted out the money she'd made in tips that night.

Gil glanced at her and flinched, seeing the bills stacked on the coffee table. He looked back at the TV and fiercely cranked up the volume, trying to ignore the images of sweaty drunk men shoving those fistfuls of cash at the almost-naked twenty-one-year old that he couldn't save and couldn't keep.

"That seven-year old girl who was abducted from outside her school gates turned up. We found her strangled and raped in a playground," Gil uttered sharply. Catherine looked up at him and stared.

"Jesus Christ, Gil," she snapped. "Why the fuck would you say it like that?"

He didn't look at her. "Because that's how it happened," he told her.

Catherine shuffled the notes away, angrily. "You don't feel any-fucking-thing, do you, Gil?" she accused him. "You just say these things as though they happen every day and get on with it."

Gil was beginning to feel irritated now – he hadn't slept properly ever since that little girl had disappeared last Tuesday and Catherine was still slightly coked-up from the lines she did before going on stage – he could see it in her unfocussed eyes and the white crumbs beneath her fingernails. That little girl had represented everything Gil knew was wrong with the world – and Catherine, just as blonde-haired as the seven-year was when he'd found her, was yet another reflection of this corrupt and over-sexed society.

"They _do_ happen every day," he said through his teeth and stared hard at the late-night reruns of MASH.

"That doesn't make it okay."

"I never said it did."

Catherine got to her feet and thrust the cash into her purse. "Will you stop being so fucking pedantic?" she demanded and noticed when Grissom raised his eyebrows – surprised at her choice of words.

That stung – as though he hadn't expected her to know that word. He didn't know why he'd let himself do that – it wasn't even true – he'd just wanted to hurt her for being high, for selling her body every night, for being part of the impurity that might've driven the asshole they'd arrested that night to go looking for innocence in elementary schools.

"You can be a real bastard sometimes, Gil," Catherine muttered darkly and then got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" he asked as she stalked off towards the door. Catherine stopped and turned on her heels – he could see the blurriness in her eyes even then and he gripped the television remote tightly.

"What does it matter to you?" she spat. "It's not like you care – you don't care about anything; you just live your life like the cold, dead strangers you attend the autopsies of – never feeling, never caring."

Gil jumped to his feet – he'd lost his patience with Catherine, coming in here, making accusations about feeling when he felt _everything_ – more than the men who fucked her in bathroom stalls and never learnt her name – and she had no idea.

"What do you want me to feel, Catherine?" he demanded. "Because you're sure as hell not feeling anything right now. You want me to snort coke off men's room toilets, like you? And take drug after drug until I'm so numb that I think it's okay to go and fuck around with other people's hearts?"

Catherine's eyes narrowed dangerously. "_Other people's hearts_?" she repeated, dubiously. "Surely you're not talking about yourself, when I've spent over a year trying to figure out where we stood together only to reach the conclusion that you clearly are not interested in me? You're one to talk, Gil Grissom, about fucking with people's hearts."

And she turned around and stormed right out of the door. Gil dropped the TV remote onto the floor.

What had she just said? Had she really been trying to figure out if he was interested in her?

All this time, Gil had assumed Catherine was being her usual self – physical, flirtatious and ignorant to every man that drooled after her when she walked down The Strip at 4am to visit him. 'Friends' was all he'd ever thought he could be with Catherine Flynn – and 'friends' was pretty good, really, he used to reason with himself when he lay alone in bed.

Staring at the closed front door, he noticed a dollar bill that had escaped her purse during her irate exit. She can't have meant it, he told himself. No – it must've been the cocaine talking.

-

The next morning, Catherine knocked on his door again and, when Gil opened it, he saw sobriety in her eyes. But he also saw a kind of shame on her face and noticed she was wearing the same clothes she'd walked out of his apartment in last night.

"I slept with Eddie," she said. Gil felt a crushing weight sink into him.

"Okay," he answered impassively.

Catherine rubbed her forearm awkwardly in the doorway. She watched his face carefully and sensed, though he gave nothing away, the pain he tried to mask. It was too late to take anything back and too late to start all over. She wrapped her arms around him in one swift movement, before he had time to push her away.

"Gil, I'm sorry," she whispered in his ear and held him in a hug – arms around his neck. "You're one of my best friends; I hate fighting with you like this."

And there it was – friends – they'd missed their chance.

Reluctantly, Gil moved his arms around her waist and hugged her back.

"It's okay, Cath," he said with a sigh. "We'll just forget about it."

And knew that, while neither of them would be able to forget, they would never talk about it again. As he held her, with all the platonic hell he'd landed himself in, Gil felt himself sicken at the cloying smell of another man still on her fair skin.

- o -


	16. A Pair Of TooLong Sleeves

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**Yessss… Who wants to take my A level Chemistry exams for me? That'd be great, thanks. In exchange, I offer you this rather attractive (short is the new long) chapter. Oh, well. Even if you don't take my exams for me, you may have this chapter. I think it's because so many of you left so many great reviews for me. Thank you ibreak4csi, Erica, gabiroba, DrusillaBraun, Anaharath, FoxyWombat, AnneHerbold, Peaky, w00t and blatfink. Anyone else with exams going on right now – good luck. They're really not fun. But anyway – yes – Zwischenzug. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Sixteen. A ****Pair Of Too-Long Sleeves**

- o -

**(Now)**

Gil's jacket across her shoulders soon warmed Catherine up and she stayed sitting on the patio, taking small sips of her coffee and picking at the breakfast he'd brought her. This would take more getting over, she suspected, than almost anything else. And she'd had a lot of things to get over recently – what with Sam's death and the preceding events with Lindsey and herself. She'd never thought that Gil, of all people, would ever give her something to get over, though.

Sighing, Catherine drained her coffee cup and stood up. Grissom's jacket wrapped around her smelt like him; she recognised it instantly and it only served to remind her of all they'd lost together.

He was sitting on the couch again when she went back inside, and looked around instantly when she came in through the patio doors. Catherine saw him jump to his feet and open his mouth to speak and then saw him close it again – not having anything to say.

"Is this what it's going to be like now?" she asked him. "Using everything we once shared as a means of getting at each other?"

Gil shook his head wordlessly for a moment, an ache in his heart somewhere to see her standing there with his jacket on – the sleeves hanging down longer than her slender arms.

"I didn't mean to say it," he said. "It just came out."

"Still," Catherine said and he nodded. In the pause that followed, Gil – for once – beat indecision and broke the silence, stepping forwards towards her. She saw him, arms open, but – before she had time to think – she'd already side-stepped him as he attempted to draw her close.

Gil blinked, surprised, at Catherine's quick evasion and then felt himself recoil, embarrassed. He'd just wanted to hold her – just for a moment – and pretend like it was 1982 and they hadn't hurt each other at all. When had their relationship become a test of endurance?

"Not –" Catherine began sharply, ducking out of his way. "Not right now. Please."

"Sorry – I'm sorry," he repeated, shuffling his feet.

Catherine sighed and looked at the distance between them – one and a half feet of impassable tension. They would never get past this with lies – lying to each other, lying to themselves – she realised. And, with a sinking heart, it occurred to her that she would never forgive herself if she just gave up. She had to try – _try_, at least – to fix things between them. And there was only one way to do that: a full-blown, painful retracing of every bad feeling between them.

"It's not just about a loss of friendship," she conceded and turned her face towards his – open and resignedly honest. "You know that, right?"

He jerked his head in a nod. "I know."

"But I don't want to talk about that, yet," she continued. "Not yet."

Gil's neck allowed a more fluid nod this time and he plunged his hands down into his pockets, stopping himself from reaching out to her – knowing she would've hated that.

"That's okay," he said. "We'll talk about whatever you want to talk about. Or we don't have to talk at all."

"Thank you."

He shrugged his shoulders and extended a hand. "Friends?" he offered.

Catherine pushed the flopping sleeves of Gil's jacket up past her elbows to free her hands. A small smile curled her lips as she grasped a hold of his hand, feeling them warmer than her own.

"For now," she told him and both of them sensed the possibility of too much truth in that statement to even attempt a laugh.

- o -


	17. The Other Man

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**This has been rather a long delay, hasn't it? I ****apologise**** – but, on the bright side, my exams are over now and I can continue to piss about and do absolutely nothing! Thank you to my Chapter 16 reviewers – I know it was a very short chapter, so it's admirable that you could find anything to say about it at all. So here I am, almost a month later, thanking DrusillaBraun, Teliko. x3, FoxyWombat, Erica, gabiroba, ibreak4csi and all those reviews from Angsty Miss – who, might I add, has also not updated her fic, "After Hours" for ages and really ought to. Everybody go nag her about it! After you've read this, though… Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Seventeen. The ****Other Man**

- o -

**(Then)**

If Catherine had ever been truly thankful for anything – anything, including that her mom never called the LVPD when she ran away one last time or that she and Steph had managed to get a good deal on rent by sucking off the landlord – then she was thankful that her boyfriend lived in the apartment above one of her closest friends. It made things so much more convenient, she mused with a smile as she lay naked on Eddie's bed and listened to him in the shower. There was always someone in this apartment block she would be able to go to – for very different things.

A smile touched her lips, remembering the feral passion in Eddie's strong arms, in his bold tongue, in his hips. Like she said – _very_ different things.

-

If Gil had ever had true hatred for anything – anything, including whoever put the first toddler on his slab in LA, or that time he got too drunk on a night before his midterms and, with a horrible hangover, fell asleep drooling on a poorly-written essay about the medical uses of synthetic polymers – then he hated the fact that that_ bastard_ Eddie Willows lived above his apartment, hated that he was dating Catherine and _hated_ – more than both these things – that he could actually hear them having sex in the bedroom above his own.

He gripped the hard edge of the mattress when he tried to sleep after a long graveyard shift – about the time when Catherine would finish work and come to see him – and furiously tried to blot out the noises above him.

It was no good.

The more he tried to ignore it, the more they took over his brain – and soon it was the only thing he could hear. The screeching in the bedsprings, the pounding of the headboard – and his best friend, the twenty-one-year old with sparkling blue eyes and soft strawberry blonde hair that gently grazed his cheek when she whispered secret things into his ear – screaming out some other man's name.

_Eddie!_

Fuck you, Eddie Willows. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Gil sat up in his t-shirt and boxer shorts and rocked on the side of the bed, gripping his head in his hands. He ground his teeth so hard together he was sure he'd be spitting out blood and enamel onto the carpet any minute.

_Ed – Eddie!_

A flashing image of _his_ hands clawing at her skin – her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open – and Gil… Gil hated his imagination. Sure, it was useful at work – to run with the evidence and fill in the gaps with logical reconstruction, but tonight it was more than working against him.

The first time Catherine and her new Official Boyfriend _consummated their relationship_, Gil thought sourly – and he could hear the whole goddamn thing. He punched his palms into his ears – huh, otosclerosis didn't seem like such a rough deal now.

_Oh – Eddie._

That was it.

Gil snatched up his jeans and tugged them on. Half-tripping over the cuffs, he stumbled out of his bedroom – his feet finding the first pair of shoes he encountered on the way to the door. All he could think was that the girl he had fallen in love with was upstairs, proving with Eddie Willows that society had been right all along – a geeky, introverted scientist like himself could never get a girl like Catherine Flynn.

He ran out of his apartment door at five-thirty in the morning, without taking a coat, slammed the door shut and just kept running until he was three blocks away from his building. Gil slowed to a walk as he jogged past an eerily-lit Walgreen's.

For the first time in his life, he cursed the fact that he hadn't been one of those numbskull jocks that Catherine always inexplicably seemed to fall for. And then was shocked to find himself willing to sacrifice the beauty of knowledge and complex thought for the beauty he'd found in just one person. One beautiful, unattainable person.

Fuck you, Eddie Willows.

-

"Hi Eddie," Gil put on a smile in the lobby when he returned in the early morning and found Eddie leaving for work.

Eddie Willows hesitated for a moment and then stretched his mouth in a wide grin, pointed at Gil – one confident finger to his chest.

"Cath's friend, right?" he said.

Gil nodded his head and continued with his charade of amiability as he shook Eddie's hand.

"Yeah – Gil Grissom," Gil said and dropped Eddie's hand, realising these were the hands touching Catherine just hours ago – the hands that drove her wild and sent him sprinting from his apartment.

Eddie had this kind of tough-guy way of moving his body that Gil was sure he must've ripped right outta movies. He jerked his shoulder and cocked his head – "Nice to meet you, Gil Grissom," he drawled, as though he knew the witty punch line to a joke everybody wanted to hear. And he put on his shades, shrugged his denim jacket on and strode out of the building.

In the empty lobby, Gil collected his mail and swallowed his bitterness. Under any other circumstances, Eddie probably would've been an alright guy, he told himself rationally. He shouldn't hate him just for being so goddamned lucky, Gil considered, as he trudged up the stairs to the third floor. He shouldn't – but he did anyway.

On the third floor, Gil felt in his pocket and found a door key – thankful that there was already one in his jeans since he sure as hell wasn't in the right frame of mind last night to remember his keys as he ran out. On the third floor, too, walking down the hallway, Gil saw a familiar shape sat on the floor – her back against his front door.

Catherine looked up, hearing his shoes scuff along the corridor. She smiled broadly at him and stood up, not noticing that he barely returned the smile.

"Hey – I was wondering why you weren't answering the door," she said brightly. Gil jerked his shoulder and cocked his head, but came off looking more coy than arrogant.

"I went out." He told her shortly and Catherine just assumed he was being his usual distant self.

"Eddie had to go to work," she explained, though he didn't want to know. "I was wondering if I could hang out here; I don't want to wake up Steph when I get back. She's probably with Jimmy anyway."

Gil looked at her – in the same clothes she went out in last night, plus a bruise-like lovebite on her neck – and knew he wouldn't have been able to turn her away, even if she'd been wearing a t-shirt with _I Love Eddie_ all over it.

"Fine," he said and opened the door, letting them both in. "But I'm probably going to go to bed – I didn't sleep much last night." And it never occurred to Catherine why.

"That's cool – I'll just watch TV or something," she smiled and added, thoughtfully, "Really quietly."

It was stupid stuff like that that made Gil want to kiss her. _Fuck you, Eddie Willows._

He kicked off his shoes at the door and pulled off his jeans before climbing back under the covers, exhausted. Gil would have to think of a better way to spend his nights if Catherine and Eddie were going to carry on the way they did last night; walking aimlessly around Vegas wasn't his favourite of activities after leaving work every night. As he drifted off to sleep, Gil offered up a silent prayer to anybody more powerful than himself that, at the very least, they wouldn't be quite as loud as last night. If he couldn't have Catherine, then he didn't want the person who did get her rubbing his face in it.

-

Just half an hour sitting on Gil's couch, remote in hand, taught Catherine that there was nothing good on TV at nine-thirty in the morning. Yawning, she sank down into the sofa and tried to stretch out. She hadn't got much sleep last night, either, she thought and a small grin crossed her lips.

Catherine rubbed her eyes. Trying to sleep would be much more appealing if her top didn't smell so much of stale cigarettes from the club they went to last night. After a few more failed attempts at sleep, Catherine gave a frustrated sigh and stood up.

Gil's room was silent except for his breathing when she slipped inside and dug through his wardrobe for an old t-shirt to wear. He'd never minded before – she used to sometimes wear his old shirts after coming back from a shift at The French Palace – so she plucked out a faded white t-shirt and pulled her own shirt over her head, replacing it with Gil's.

The room was strangely lit again, glowing red with the daylight trying to break through crimson curtains; it looked to Catherine as though the whole world was on fire and this room was the last thing to go. Catherine walked around to the other side of the bed and lay down beside her friend.

Before closing her eyes, Catherine watched his sleeping face on the pillow beside her and thought it was appropriate that Gil did not speak, barely moved, in his sleep – just a period of suspended animation for Gil Grissom. She sighed. At least, she considered, if he wouldn't let anyone get emotionally close to him, then she could rest in the knowledge that she was physically the closest person to him.

Eddie Willows dialled up the volume of the bass guitarist's microphone in the recording studio and didn't know his girlfriend was sound asleep in bed next to the man he shook hands with that morning.

And Gil Grissom woke up with Catherine's peaceful face inches from his own, her knee bent up and touching him, dressed in an old t-shirt of his. He studied her face in the soft burgundy light – the smudges of mascara below her eyes, the smeared lip gloss – and thought it was the most privately beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

- o -


	18. A Silence

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR**

**Look who it is… Sorry about the ages-wait – I've been zooming about all over the world and haven't had a chance to sit down and do this, until now. Now, I'm stuck here hopefully I'll be updating this more frequently. I have no idea if anyone is still reading or still interested in what happens next but, just in case one person still is, then I'll keep writing this. Thank you to my last reviewers – ibreak4csi, gabiroba, DrusillaBraun, Peaky, Teliko. x3, Forsaken Goddess, 27dayz, twentyplanes, Erica, Anaharath, I'll Have What She's Having, Angsty Miss and FoxyWombat. **

**I would also like to thank whoever nominated me for that GCR fanfiction award thing, because apparently I came 2****nd**** – which is always nice. It's really flattering to think that other people have actually thought of this fic even when not reading it. So thank you, and sorry about the delay. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Eighteen. A ****Silence**

- o -

**(Now)**

"So," Gil began. "What now?"

Catherine shrugged her shoulders and pulled Gil's jacket more closely around her. She searched in her mind for the most casual way to try and phrase the words that pressed at her throat.

"Is that all you think it was – with me and Eddie?" she spoke up and felt disappointed at how weak and awkward it sounded. Too much tension, she thought. He would be able to hear how much she valued his response to this question and she hadn't wanted that – showing weakness in front of Gil after what he'd just done. "I mean – you think that was it? Screwing around and never getting anywhere?"

Gil opened and shut his mouth wordlessly – twice – before he could find adequate words to console her. Why was he no good at making people feel better? – he thought desperately. He could guilt trip a man twice his size into confessing any number of sins when faced with him in an interrogation room. He could make someone feel _terrible_; but he could no longer remember how to make Catherine smile. The realisation tightened his stomach and closed off his voice for a few more painfully slow seconds.

"I'm so sorry, Cath," his words squeezed out eventually – and they sounded limp and lame and ineffectual. Catherine, of course, did not smile. He breathed and tried again. "I didn't think that. I didn't. I know… I know you tried."

"Damn right I tried," she cut in quickly and Gil felt momentarily relieved that she'd taken over the speaking role. "I didn't just let my marriage fail, Gil – not out of idleness or selfishness or anything like that. I did try – I had to – I'd had a child with him. I _tried_ – I really tried."

She sounded so exhausted and helpless in her last sentence that Gil had another urge to pull her close to him. He hesitated, remembering her quick evasion of his last attempt.

"I'm going to hug you now," he told her, decidedly. "Would that be okay?"

And, it turned out, he actually could still put a smile on Catherine's face. She breathed a laugh at his strange way of announcing it to her and then nodded, pushing back the sleeves of his jacket falling over her hands, as though in preparation.

"That would be fine."

So he did – put his arms around her and held her for the first time in what felt like years. It might really have been years; he couldn't remember anymore.

"I know you tried," he whispered. "It wasn't your fault. I was – I was just being an ass."

Gil was warmed to feel her breathe another laugh into his chest.

"Yes – you were," she said and she realised then that, while she hadn't been before, she was actually glad he came over. There was some truth in her sadness over losing that friendship she had with him – she really did miss moments like this – even if it wasn't the only thing that upset her when she found out about the whole Sara thing…

"Eddie was never good enough for you, you know?" he told her. Catherine drew back from him at that point, and Gil could see a frown on her face.

She shook her head. "That's not true – we probably deserved each other," she remarked dryly.

"You've never dated anyone good enough for you," Gil blurted before he could stop himself – suddenly now his twenty-something year old self, unable to keep his mouth shut at crucial moments with Catherine, unable to speak when they both needed him to… Catherine raised an eyebrow dubiously.

"Oh really?" she said. "Then who would you suggest?"

Her voice had a cold edge of sarcasm. After all, who was Gil Grissom to give her advice on dating?

And then something occurred to her, when he didn't say anything. This is what she realised: in movies – and on TV – this would be the part when the guy would go, "Me." Catherine's breath snagged in her throat and she waited for a reply. If Hollywood had its way, he'd grasp her firmly by the shoulders, by the waist, kiss her and say, "Me – I'm the one you should be dating – I'm the one you should love – I'm the one."

She wanted to laugh – _imagine that_ – but somehow she didn't find it as funny as she thought she would. If he really did say it… if he did that – what would happen? Where would they go from there?

_Me! _Gil's brain screamed at him, urging his lips to find the courage somewhere to speak it. _Me. It should have been me. All this time – me. _

But, again, this was just yet another crucial time in which Gil's words have failed him and he stayed silent.

"Right. I thought so." Catherine said – without either of them knowing what she meant by that.

She went and sat down on the couch, instead, but couldn't help but think – if he had played that clichéd romantic role just then – she'd probably be going into all the messy truth about why she really cared so much about him sleeping with Sara by now.

- o -


	19. The Human Trampoline

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR**

**How's this for A More Efficient Me? I thought it was the least I could do since I was so stunned by the response from people still reading and still interested – you're all excellent. Thank you for the reviews, ibreak4CSI, FoxyWombat, twentyplanes, angelaumbrello, Forsaken Goddess, DrusillaBraun, Steph7085, Lena, Erica, gabiroba and carter100. It's quite incredible to still hear from y'all after a long absence and it's always nice to hear that there are still people starting this from right at the beginning and wading through eighteen, nineteen chapters in one stretch. Thank you.**

**Also – I've seen the first two episodes of Season Eight and – wow. Wow. It's absolute wank. Not even from a GCR point of view – but just… Hmm. Disappointing. Never mind – yknow what isn't disappointing? Paul Simon's "Graceland." I love that album; watch me force it into everything! Well, hopefully, this chapter won't disappoint either. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Nineteen. The ****Human Trampoline**

- o -

**(Then)**

Men – and women, Gil thought – paid actual money to watch Catherine Flynn dance. He didn't know how much, but he'd guess it wasn't bad, considering Catherine's new silver necklace that draped her slender neck. People _paid_, he thought, and he almost wanted to laugh.

"What are you smiling at?" Catherine asked him with her own beautiful smile on her lips. She looked up from her college application form and let the end of the ballpoint pen rest on her lower lip, fixing Gil with those blue eyes of hers – eyes he had always thought suggested she was plotting something.

"I didn't think you could see me," he said in response and stepped out from the bathroom doorway – closer to the cross-legged Catherine sitting on the floor at the living room coffee table.

She raised an eyebrow and the corners of her mouth twitched. "Give me some credit; you've been standing there for ten whole minutes," she told him matter-of-factly. "And you didn't answer my question."

It was strange, Gil used to wonder and sometimes still did, on reflection, how he could love her so much he thought his heart might fail – and yet could still talk to her in calm, confident words, could still let go of her when they touched, could still watch her disappear upstairs to Eddie Willows. No amount of biological examination, Gil was sure, could calculate the surprising strength of the human spirit.

"I can't remember it – can you repeat the question, CSI Flynn?" he played along. She cleared her throat with comical self-importance and trapped the biro momentarily between her teeth.

"I asked you what you found so funny."

And Gil's response is simple and straight-forward – "You."

Catherine smirked and poked her tongue out. "Huh," was the singular, indignant noise she made before turning back to her application form. Gil waited a few more moments and, in her same spirited abandonment, saw Catherine's strawberry blonde head begin to nod again to music playing only in her memory. If Gil ever made a list of little things Catherine did that made his heart ache even more, this would be near the top.

As she tapped the pen rhythmically on the tabletop, her bare feet wriggling a beat in her lap, Gil watched her lips subconsciously form words of the song she quietly danced to. He caught a few and recognised Paul Simon's _Graceland_ – and smiled.

People paid to see her dance, but their money only let them in to stand among other gawpers in an over-crowded, overly-loud strip club. Their money didn't let them in to see Catherine Flynn sitting on his living room floor in a t-shirt and shorts and her just-washed hair drying in carefree curls across her back – dancing to music in her head. No – their money couldn't buy them that. _Their_ money paid for the fees sending Catherine to college – a thought that welled up inside her, along with the music, as she penned her details in block capitals.

"_I've reason to believe / We both__ will be received / In Graceland…"_

And Gil couldn't stop the smile on his face.

-

Gil wasn't smiling in a week. In a week's time, Gil could crawl out of bed for work on a Friday evening and could say that it was the fourth day straight he'd gone without sleep. The fourth day he'd dragged himself miserably through a shift. The fourth day he'd known he'd return home only to be kept awake by Eddie and Catherine moaning and growling and rolling all over a creaky mattress.

He'd fallen asleep, face down on the layout table; he was caught by his supervisor and sat up with the first two pages of the coroner's report stuck to his face.

"Oh – so you've cracked the case, have you, Gil?"

"Uh – no – sorry – I – sorry."

Gil yanked the pieces of paper off his cheek and cringed. "I'm sorry – I haven't slept very well lately."

And then he'd spent the last hour of his shift fuming about Eddie and Catherine, chewing bitterly over words and forming a speech he planned on unleashing on Catherine as soon as he got home. Something about her being inconsiderate and rude. Something about social etiquette. Nothing about his own personal feelings, though. None of that – too risky, too pointless.

But, when he got back home, he was greeted by the sounds of some sugary radio station echoing off the kitchen walls and Catherine sliding pancakes onto a plate, wearing those cut-off shorts and grinning up at him when she sees him stroll in. He paused. Then he remembered: _Catherine – I need to talk to you about that asshole you're dating, because I've had enough of pretending I'm okay with it…_ His mouth felt like he'd been gargling sawdust. He blinked. Catherine laughed.

"What? You've never seen pancakes before?"

And then he recovered. _Catherine – I need to talk to you about – _"No, I've just never seen you cook something that looks edible before."

She took a swipe at him with a spatula and, before he knew it, he was grinning back. _Well, this wasn't part of the plan – "Catherine – I need to talk to you about that asshole you're dating…"_ It had to be done. He remembered, he cleared his throat but couldn't quite look at her as she leant against the counted and smiled.

"Catherine – I – "

She waited. Kept smiling.

"Catherine – I need – "

"What?" Her grin started to fade.

He couldn't do it; he couldn't have done it as soon as he'd heard the buzzing of Catherine's favourite radio station when he put his key in the front door.

"Syrup." he said. "Gotta have syrup with pancakes, right?"

_Chicken._

-

"You're staring at my necklace, right?"

"What?"

Catherine smirked a little and skated a piece of pancake across her plate with a fork, not really eating anymore.

"Well, you're either staring at my breasts or you're staring at my necklace – which is it?"

And, even though they both knew she was kidding, Gil couldn't stop the awkward flush of red to his face. He shook it off – "It's a nice necklace."

A smile crossing her lips, Catherine put down her fork and stretched her slender, bare arms languorously – cat-like – Gil heart ached.

"Thanks – I'll tell Eddie you approve; he bought it for me."

_Ouch._

It must've shown on his face – a grimace as he felt his chest twist – because Catherine immediately sighed, dropping her arms back to the table.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Gil. What the hell is your problem with Eddie?"

"My – my problem?" _Say it! Say it! _

Catherine rolled her eyes and crossed her arms and, in an instant, she goes from being the person Grissom loves the most to the person Grissom fears the most. Why was it that these two people were always one and same for him?

"I'm not an idiot, Gil; I'm not brain-dead." Catherine snapped. "You think I don't notice that you get all hostile every time Eddie is mentioned?"

She glared at him, just waiting for a smart-mouth response so she could retaliate and then walk out, slamming the door shut in a blaze of strawberry-blonde fury. But Gil clammed up, said nothing, and Catherine couldn't do anything with that.

"God damn it, Gil." – was all she could spit out, before standing up – Gil's wooden dining chairs scraping on the floor – and turning to go. _Catherine – I need to talk to you about – _

"Maybe if…" Gil started and trailed off. Catherine stopped, finding the fight she'd been looking for.

"Maybe if what?"

"Maybe if you'd both stop fucking so loudly right above my head every single day, I'd feel less hostile." Gil said with quiet anger. Catherine would rather he'd yelled; she knows what to do with yelling.

"Why don't you just grow up and get over yourself? I'm only at Eddie's on Tuesday nights and weekends, so why don't you start off by being less of an ass on the days in between?"

Gil thinks two things when Catherine slams his apartment door shut. One is him wondering how many times that door had been the unwitting victim of their arguments. The second is Gil realising that – no, he hadn't been exaggerating and that Eddie had been having loud sex above his bedroom every day – just, not always with Catherine.

He sank back into his seat. He has a problem with that asshole Catherine's dating. And now, after all this, he doubts she'll believe anything he has to say about Eddie Willows. She'll just brush it off as his own personal prejudice, slam that door and walk right upstairs, into his bed. She'll slink back between the sheets like those other girls on days in between. And Gil will sit downstairs and ache.

-

"_There's a girl in New York City who calls __herself 'The Human Trampoline' / And sometimes when I'm tumbling in turmoil, I think, 'Oh, so this is what she means.'"_

- o -_  
_


	20. A Different Set Of Eyes

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR**

**I'm really stringing some of you guys along, aren't I? Not to mention totally dragging this out. I will aim to get the next chapter out as soon as I can and to make it better than this one. In my defence, I no longer watch CSI on account of it being so terrible these days – and therefore I haven't really been reminded of this fic. But here we are; it exists. Thank you to everyone who is still, amazingly, still reading and still leaving feedback. You guys are excellent – so a massive thanks to twentyplanes, ibreak4CSI, Peaky, FoxyWombat, Forsaken Goddess, Anne Herbold, grillows, Erica, KekeWillows, gabiroba, Drusilla Braun and**** TheHamsterInMyMind. As always – Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -**  
**

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty. A Different Set Of Eyes**

- o -**  
**

**(Now)**

He blinked. For a long time, all Gil could do was stand there and blink his eyes – swallowing a couple of times in his dry mouth. The time had passed – again – to say something romantic and have it mean something. The time had passed for him to turn everything around and make it different and make it better. Gil couldn't tell if that time went past him just now, or whether he'd watched it go years ago. And he couldn't tell what it looked like, either; it all felt the same – awkward, suffocating – no matter whether he was twenty-five or forty-nine, or somewhere in between.

"I can't tell what you're thinking anymore," Catherine said suddenly. It took a moment or two for Gil to notice the hint of sadness in her voice and it softened his throat – allowed some words to pass.

"I didn't know you ever could."

She smiled slightly. "You're not as mysterious as you think sometimes, you know. I used to… I used to know sometimes." Maybe she had been confident of this at first, but then thought better of it. Catherine reeled it in a bit, pulling her sleeves over her hands and adding, "Well – I thought I did."

There was something quite honest and edgy about Catherine's comment and, in a way, it reminded him of how she was when they didn't know each other. He remembered snatches of memories: Catherine shifting from brazenly confident smartass to the shy, apprehensive kid that shone through when she forgot about the façade. It all made Gil feel guilty.

"I was thinking about…"

When Gil blinked his eyes, a long blink as he thought things over, he could see Catherine – aged twenty – poking a long spoon into a melted ice-cream sundae and not really talking to him. And he could see Catherine – aged twenty-one – pulling her coat off the back of his living room chairs as she made for the front door. And he could see Catherine – aged twenty-two – tying her hair back on a Sunday morning whilst she craned her neck over a magazine.

"I was thinking about how stupid this is, I suppose."

Sometimes Gil wished he could look at Catherine through a different set of eyes, if only for the relief. He thought sometimes that maybe, if he could just look at Catherine without knowing her, and loving her, and missing her, and all this mess of crap at the same time – he thought that maybe it'd be easier. Maybe he could just look at her and shrug, seeing just another girl and thinking – hey, well, she's not that special. Maybe that would be easier. But maybe not; he really couldn't say.

"Sara loves me. I've always known where I was with her."

He paused and blinked (Catherine – aged twenty-three – making him chicken soup, against the odds, when he's sick with the flu.)

"And there are parts of me that love her, too. Everything adds up with Sara; I can no longer remember any of the reasons why I turned her down before."

Catherine nodded slowly. "It makes sense," she said, because listening to him then hadn't made her angry or jealous. It hadn't made her upset. It wasn't about her, was it? It was about her friend, Gil, and his childhood butterfly collection, and his ASL alphabet, and his old business cards with the Los Angeles address on them.

"It does, doesn't it?" he replied. And Catherine nodded again, because she thought that's what he wanted. Probably what he deserved – that she was supportive and didn't shoot him down as he looked at the floor, then to the windows, then to Catherine and back, like some shy, awkward kid.

All he was really doing, anyway, was wishing he could look at Catherine with a different set of eyes, so that – maybe – this whole messy day, the awkward pauses, the tension gripped in her shoulders, would be easier.

- o -**  
**


	21. The Needful Things

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**I am also massively tired. That's probably why this came out. This is like how, during winter, I would write more often about being cold. There really is very little imagination in me, apparently. So anyway – I think I'll be constantly apologising for lateness from now on. I'm always impressed, grateful and impressed again to hear from readers who remember this fic and want more, and from readers who've ploughed through those twenty chapters in one sitting. You guys are great, and every review I get further pushes me to get this fic finished within a lifetime. I reckon it can be done. Probably. **

**Thank you to: FoxyWombat, iferleigh, TheHamsterInMyMind, Erica, DV, ibreak4CSI, ****wendysam, Drusilla Braun, vanilla slash and Kristi. I don't know if I'll be able to keep any promises I make about time limits or whatever, but I'm going to try really very hard. Alright – you've waited long enough. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-One. The ****Needful Things**

- o -

**(Then)**

Two weeks was a new record for Gil and Catherine. That was how long she didn't speak to him for, after that Eddie incident. It was a whole five days longer than their previous record – nine days of the silent treatment after they'd argued over Catherine's coke habit and Gil's hermit lifestyle.

When Catherine finally broke it with a call from the payphone in The French Palace ("I got into UNLV."), Gil had wanted to make a light joke about their new record, or something. Instead, he'd been caught so off-guard by hearing her voice again, could hardly believe it, that his response had been a long pause and then,

"Catherine?"

She cleared her throat. "I just thought you'd want to know." And then she put the phone down.

It probably wasn't the right time for jokes, anyway. So he'd waited until he'd heard her clattering up the stairwell towards Eddie's at 3am that night, and he'd opened his front door as she reached the third floor – his floor.

"Catherine?"

She stopped at the end of the hall.

"You're the only one who really knows how much this college thing means to me," she said – and her voice echoed down the hall, interrupted the buzz of fluorescent light. Gil smiled, and remembered how much he'd missed her voice. And he remembered missing her all over again when she turned away from the stairs – walked towards him instead and wrapped her arms around him. He thought, for the first time, that he didn't actually mind her cocaine-glassed eyes.

"You were always going to get there," Gil said.

He put his arms around her and didn't even think about the things she'd been doing an hour, half an hour, earlier.

"I've missed you; I'm sorry."

"I know."

-

Things got better after that, in that straightaway, purposeful forcing of difficult things back, way back, to the dark corners of minds. It was the same way Gil swallowed his feelings for his best friend; the same way Catherine chose to never expect too much from Eddie.

Eddie wasn't a bad guy, she knew that – Eddie was just every guy she'd dated. No, scratch that. Eddie was the guy every other boyfriend she'd had _wanted_ to be. He was smooth, he had connections and money; he was strong, passionate – amazing in bed. But Catherine never expected more from him. She learned to forget that he threw away 'I love you's on bad occasions, learned to ignore when he ignored her. She forced it away, the little thorn that pressed and twisted somewhere inside of her whenever he called to say he couldn't meet her, without giving a reason – Catherine hearing the laughing voices of his friends, of other girls, in the background on the phone line.

Once, when she'd woken up face-down on his tiled bathroom floor, she'd listened carefully and heard the fuzzy sound of The Discovery Channel coming from the television in the apartment below and it had struck her that she should find a way of merging these two polarised men in her life. Imagine it. It would be incredible! It would be the attentive, careful Gil Grissom – living his life with his heart, with his mind – mixed with the thrilling, savage Eddie Willows – living his life bodily, so physically, all hands and skin and mouths.

She should pay more attention to her at UNLV; she should see if she could find a way of splicing the two, she thought. And then she'd laughed at the thought of it, and heard her laugh back of her again from the tiled walls.

-

"Catherine Flynn – are you paying attention?"

Catherine jumped; her head snapped up. Had she been asleep? She'd been asleep, hadn't she? Her lecturer was looking at her, her fellow students were looking at her.

"Sorry," she mumbled and felt her face flush red. She turned back to her textbook, running her eyes over the words instead of using it as a pillow and kept her head down until the attention was off her again. This really wasn't working out, was it? At some point, she'd forgotten about that life necessity – sleep. She worked most nights at The French Palace. She spent most other nights at Eddie's. She spent days at lectures and classes, and, if not there, then she was at Gil's – getting him to look over her papers or reading through the books and case files he brought back for her.

There was no time for sleep. It only struck her then, at that point: she was so tired.

Maybe she should actually try to sleep tonight. Maybe she should stop trying to do so much.

-

"Catherine."

"Hmm?"

"Cath – hey – Catherine. Cath."

"What?"

"Hey – Cath…"

Catherine felt the bed dip under Eddie's weight as he crawled onto the bed beside her. She could feel his hands propping himself up, pressing valleys into the mattress by her shoulder. "What? What is it, Ed?"

"Cath…" The stubble on Eddie's chin scratched roughly against her cheek and he kissed her temple, lips, neck.

"Eddie… cut it out."

"Come on, Catherine…"

"…No – Eddie… I'm tired. Just leave it, okay?" Catherine's voice thick, exasperated into the pillow. But Eddie persisted – scratches on her cheek, kisses on her breasts. She swatted him away, annoyed and Eddie sat back on his heels, looking at her.

A pause – and then the bed lurched as he got up with a loud sigh. Catherine wanted to keep her eyes shut and go to sleep, wanted to sleep so much, but against her better judgement, opened them: returned his glare; rose to the fight. It was one of those things that Catherine's mom had always complained about in Catherine. The girl just would not drop a fight. She defended herself more than she had to, fought bitterly, held grudges. The first time Catherine ran away was after a fight with her mother about a curfew or a boy or a report card, and Lily Flynn remembered thinking – still just a little voice then – that if Catherine ever ended up with a man who battled like she did, raged like she did, then her daughter would be in big trouble. Lily Flynn remembered that, the first time it occurred to her, when Catherine was twelve.

"God damn it, Eddie – don't start this with me now."

His lips were turned up in this snarl he had when he squared up for a fight. "If we don't talk about it now, Catherine, what other time will we get? This evening when you're at the Palace? Tomorrow, when you're too busy studying to even give me a call?"

"Will you lay off, Eddie?" she sat up and her hair fell about her bare shoulders. "This is not about you. I'm trying to do something with my life, okay? I'm trying to actually make something of myself."

"Unlike me, you mean?" he shot back. It always came down to this. It was always drugs, women and this: the top three of things Eddie and Catherine argued about.

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"That's what you meant, wasn't it, Cath? Goddamn, you stuck-up bitch. You really think that you're the only one worth anything around here, don't you? Because you use the money to go to night school? Aren't you forgetting that I paid for your first semester? Aren't you forgetting that you spent half the money you earned stripping on coke?"

"Fuck you, Eddie; I paid you back for that semester." Catherine felt her eyes dark and blazing, felt her heart hard and cold.

"Oh – right – of course. I guess that means you aren't a coked-up stripper, then. You know, you're right, Catherine. You're really making something of yourself."

"Fuck you, Eddie."

"You know, I would, if I could – but that's what I need you around for," he smirked. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed themselves into an angry line. What could she say to something like that?

Catherine leapt of the bed and stormed out of the room, out of the front door. Behind her, she heard him call – "Although, maybe I should call one of your dancer friends, since you're no good anymore."

She didn't care, she didn't care. Her bare feet slapped at the dusty wood floors and she thought of all the stuff she should've said to him. It made her even more furious. What an asshole.

-

A loud impatient knocking at his front door.

Catherine still looked just as furious, standing in her tank-top and shorts, when Gil opened the door. But the surprised, and then slightly apprehensive look on his face lightened her, a little.

"Are you alright?" He asked quietly. He was in his pyjamas, too – a UCLA t-shirt and boxer shorts – and his tired eyes told Catherine that she'd woken him up; her anger faded a little more.

"I just –" she paused as a lump rose in her throat and she was stunned to find tears welling in her eyes. This was stupid, she thought – this was how tired she must be, because she sure as hell wasn't going to cry about an asshole like Eddie. She took a breath: "Eddie."

Gil didn't say anything for some time. "He didn't – hurt you, did he, Cath?"

She breathed a laugh and he could hear the bitter undertones that made his heart sink. Absently, sleepily – as though he hadn't really woken at all – he raised his hand and gently caressed her cheek.

"I need to sleep." she said finally. Gil nodded, took her by the hand, and led her back to bed.

- o -


	22. A Sum Of Logical Parts

Zwischenzug

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**So it's been something ridiculous like three months, hasn't it? And there isn't exactly an overflowing amount of GCR fiction on this site, so we really need everything we can get. Even this chapter which I actually genuinely dislike quite a bit. But it's okay, because I have written chapter twenty-three already and GUARANTEE that I will post it within the next month. I would like to thank vanilla slash, Drusilla Braun, Erica, iferleigh, FoxyWombat, iwishiwerekerry, Wizard-in-Disguise and TwistedSister03. Also, anyone who has started at the beginning and kept going. That's very cool.**

**I will be better next time. I'll definitely do this better next time. But still – enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-Two. A Sum Of Logical Parts**

- o -

That was that, then, Catherine thought. She'd nodded and, in nodding, she'd given it up. _Yes_, she'd said in that sealing movement,_ yes – you're right – Sara fits you perfectly_.

"I agree," she said, once she'd found some words – numbing up in the realisation of what she'd just done. "I agree with you, Gil." What had she done? She'd just given up on a twenty-four year battle.

"You do?"

Was 'battle' the right word? It wasn't really a battle. They had battled, sure – but it hadn't been a constant struggle, had it? If it had, it would probably have been easier.

"No, I really do – you deserve this. To be happy with someone – and to be with someone who loves you."

It hadn't been a war; it hadn't been a setting of ships against ships. It had been much more like ebbing, flowing waves of love and hurt. It hadn't been the two of them up against each other – yelling and throwing furniture late into the night like she'd done with Eddie. They hadn't done that. But it had been brutal; it had been bloody.

"You really mean that, Cath?"

And Catherine clasped her two cold hands together, warmed them between her knees, perched on the edge of the couch. She nodded again – felt her head like a deadweight crudely stuck on her neck. That was it, then.

Gil sighed. He didn't know why he sighed then – it really wasn't the type of thing that warranted a sigh. He didn't think it took over too much, though; it struck him as odd, all the same.

"So why were you so mad?"

She didn't look at him, shrugged her bony shoulders in the jerky sudden motion of someone trying to be more casual than they feel, trying to shake off her shadow.

"It's the friendship thing, that's all it is, Gil – really. And I guess I've had a lot of stuff going on with Lindsay and my mother, and I guess sometimes I wish we were closer, like how we used to be, so I could talk these things through with you and –" she cut herself off. Having too many excuses always looked suspicious. "I've missed you being there for me."

Things like sitting on the kitchen floor at 3am, backs against opposite kitchen cabinets, their legs curled around each others'. Things like visiting his mother and signing her name. Things like bailing her mother's boyfriend out of LVPD. Things like staring contests over the dinner table.

"I'm sorry, Cath. I didn't think you'd miss that as much as I did. And then, I guess I just stopped remembering how it used to be."

Catherine blinked, surprised.

"Why didn't you think I'd miss it as much as you did? Didn't we both need this?"

"I wasn't ever sure." Gil uttered.

And there came that spark of flame in Catherine's eyes. "How could you not know? I always made time for you, even after Sam, I spent the night in hospital with you for your operation. Even when we were both living apart, working separate shifts, I still called – I still wondered. If anything, I should be the one wondering – where we you, when Sam died? And when Lindsey was kidnapped?"

"I've always been here – like when you and Eddie used to fight, or when Stephanie died."

There was a silence. It was always in the back of their minds.

"That was so many years ago."

He scuffed his shoe on the edge of the carpet. "I thought it'd be better if I backed off. I thought that's what you wanted."

"How did you ever get that idea?" Cath said but he didn't respond. "That's never been what I wanted. I've missed you, Gil."

Things like his first domestic abuse case. Things like overdosing in the bathroom at Eddie's friends club. Things like Steph.

"We have a history, you know?"

"I know."

"I'm afraid we're forgetting it."

- o -


	23. The French Palace Sept 1987

Zwischenzug

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. GCR**

**I'm ****doing my homework for Continuity 101. Unlucky, TPTB. Thank you very much for previous chapter's reviews. I really mean it when I say how surprised and pleased I am to see that there is still interest in this fic. So thank you to ibreak4csi, spottedhorse, Review1234 (email me, woman), FoxyWombat, Erica, Blondie18, Drusilla Braun, shadowsamurai83, Lena, Melissa and iwishiwerekerry. **

**I will return in a month. This is how I reckon things would've fitted together. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-Three. The ****French Palace (Sept. 1987)**

- o -

**(Then)**

September the 18th fell on a Friday in 1987 and Gil would always remember sitting in the A/V lab, studying endless reels of CCTV footage from some plodding case with eyes that stung. He'd remember his supervisor's knuckles rapping on the doorframe and looking up, blinking as his eyes watered.

"You should have the lights on," his supervisor said. "You'll wreck your eyes."

Gil smiled slightly. "I'm almost done."

The supervisor hovered in the doorway, pausing on the edge of the real subject at hand.

"You can carry on next shift, if you like," he said. "Some girl at a crime scene was asking for you."

Gil sat up. "Where?"

"419 – the parking lot at the French Palace."

And dread took a slow dive in his stomach. The next thing he was aware of was that he was stood on his feet, now, heading for the door.

"Has the vic been ID-ed?" he demanded as he walked. His supervisor half-ran to keep up with him.

"I don't know – she was a dancer," the supervisor offered. "Her friend mentioned your name, that's all."

-

Gil drove faster than he'd ever driven before – with cold sweat on the palms of his hands and a sensation like ice gripping his internal organs. He barely saw the road as he sped over it that night and, in retrospect, was probably very lucky not to have hit anyone. But at the time, he did not think about that. He did not think about stop lights or traffic cops or pedestrians in Las Vegas who might've liked to survive the night. He couldn't think about anything, anyone, other than Catherine.

_Please, please, don't be Catherine. Don't be Catherine. Don't be Catherine._

And still his mind taunted him nastily with all the stripped-down, beaten dancers he'd seen in old cases and new crime scenes: 419 down The Strip, some anonymous woman – twenty-something, blonde – perhaps – a dancer, a stripper, a prostitute. But if it wasn't anonymous? If it wasn't just another sad tale of Vegas backstreets? What if it was Catherine?

_Oh god, oh god – please__, don't be Catherine._

Yeah – what if it was Catherine? What if that was Catherine's empty face on the parking lot concrete? What if that was her blood soaked, like some kind of phony virginal purity, into the French Palace costumes she hadn't had time to change out of? What if it was her? What if you got out of the car and walked onto the scene and what if it was her?

_No. No – stop it__, no, it can't be her. It can't – it can't._

And why not? Why not her? She was just the same as those other young women he collected SAE kits of at the lab and viewed through trained eyes as they lay on slabs in the morgue.

_Catherine's not like them__. Catherine's not the same. _

And why not?

Why not, Gil Grissom?

Because you love her? That does not make her different. Maybe the other women were, are still, loved – and missed. Catherine could be missed. _You_ could miss her. You could miss her terribly. It could be her.

_Please. Please. Please, don't be Catherine._

Grissom found his hands slipped on the steering wheel as his clammy palms failed to grip correctly. He found his head spun a little and his eyes glazed every so often with tears he thought might fall but didn't. He started making bargains in his head as he urged his car faster towards The Palace.

_Not Catherine – please, not Catherine. I'll get her cleaned up, off the coke – I'll take care of her, I will, I will. Give me another chance. Give me some more time. Not tonight, not Catherine – please, oh god, don't let it be her._

He skidded into the parking lot at The French Palace and stopped some feet short of the yellow tape and fluttering blue lights. Gil got out of his car, couldn't feel his feet on the tarmac.

_Please. Just let her be okay._

-

Catherine was on the scene when Gil arrived. He ducked beneath the crime scene tape and saw her straight away – talking to an officer, her arms crossed across her chest. _Thank god._

"Cath –" the word fell out of his mouth in an odd, stricken gasp as he rushed to her and wrapped his arms tightly around her. The young cop blinked a few times and then folded away his notebook, stepping back.

"God, Cath," he said. "I thought it was you." And he shivered even then, just from saying it out loud, recalling the pounding fear and desperate pleas. Gil held her closer.

"No, not me," Catherine's reply sounded hollow and cold – Gil didn't hear that until a few seconds after she'd said it. She pushed him away from her slightly and looked strangely through him. "It's Stephanie."

Only then did Gil look to the girl lying in the middle of the crime scene, the coroner crouched over her. Gil had met Stephanie a few times, when taking Catherine home or meeting her after work, and he'd heard Catherine talk about Steph many more times. He felt a weird guilt bite at his insides, knowing all the time that all he truly felt was relief that it was not Catherine being zipped away into the body bag.

He looked back to Catherine, who stared with glazed eyes at the body of her best friend being taken away. He wanted to say something comforting – to be the good, solid friend she needed now – but all sympathetic, reassuring sentiments couldn't pass his lips.

"I thought it was you," he repeated and felt the numb, echoed words choke thickly in his throat. He gazed at the top of Catherine's bowed head and studied her strawberry blonde parting so hard that it made his ribs ache. Gil thought for a moment, then, that he was going to cry – with relief, with guilt, with the pent-up adrenaline and raw fear that had pulsed through him on the panicked journey here.

He didn't cry, though, knowing they wouldn't be tears for Stephanie, but tears for his own brief, imagined loss of Catherine. And, when Catherine looked up at him, he noticed that she hadn't cried either.

-

Somewhere, at the back of her mind, a small voice spoke her statement for her.

Catherine heard it, distantly, coming out of her mouth, as she told the police officer everything about when she last saw Steph, the people Steph knew and the secrets they shared whilst sat cross-legged on the couch together, in their pyjamas. Catherine heard this voice falling from her tongue as she sat on the hard, plastic chairs at a table in the Las Vegas Crime Lab, and idly wondered if this was her own voice. It must've been her voice, she realised mid-way through the questioning. It must've been her voice because her throat was getting sore and her lips were drying out.

Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie.

Stephanie shared an apartment with Catherine Flynn on Cedar Avenue. She worked nights at the French Palace. She was twenty-one years old. She could drive a stick, but didn't have a license. She was allergic to pineapple. She hated that _Los Lobos_ song that was always being played on the radio. She took ages in the shower every morning. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie.

The name lost all meaning.

Catherine heard her voice pause, halfway through explaining where she'd been after work that night. It went,

"My boyfriend – Eddie – had a gig and I –"

And then cut out.

"Sorry. Can I have a glass of water or something?" it said.

The officer nodded and left the room.

When the door swung open again, Catherine's numb eyes roamed the person's face – and recognised it.

"Catherine," Gil said, taking a seat opposite her, where the cop had sat. Gil had a frown cutting deep into his forehead and looked more focused than he had done at the scene.

"Catherine," he said. "Please – please don't go back to the Palace. It's not safe and I can't lose you like this."

"Like what?" Catherine's voice asked dazedly

Gil shuffled awkwardly in the cop's seat and leant closer to her.

"Like Stephanie." He said and Catherine became suddenly aware of how cold her hands were, sitting under the Crime Lab's over-zealous air conditioning unit in her halter-neck top and skirt.

A thought occurred to her. "I have a job there. I need the money."

"I know," Gil told her. He reached out his hands and grasped Catherine's. The feel of his warm skin against her cold fingers surprised her and she snatched her hands back to her lap quickly. Gil stared, stunned, at her for a moment before continuing.

"I know," he repeated. "But, because you're doing your degree, I can get you a job here – at the lab – as an assistant technician. It'll be better for you – it'll be safer. Please."

"I don't know; I don't know," the distant voice muttered. Catherine clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to get warm blood to her fingers. "I don't know."

"Please, Cath – please," Gil begged. "It's too dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt."

The door creaked and Gil's supervisor stood in the doorway with the returning cop, a glass of water for Catherine in his hand.

"Gil," said his supervisor. "What are you doing?"

Gil glanced distractedly between his supervisor and Catherine. "Please, Cath," he said one more time.

"Fine, fine, fine," Catherine's voice droned and crossed her arms, folding her freezing hands underneath to heat them up. She started rocking slightly on her chair. "Fine – I'll do it, fine."

"She's in shock, Gil," said the supervisor and Catherine realised somewhere that they must be talking about her. "Now is not the time."

Gil stood up reluctantly as the cop came in and set the glass of water down on the table in front of Catherine.

"Miss Flynn – I just need to ask you a few more questions about Stephanie," the cop said. Gil took a few steps back.

Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Catherine thought. God, her hands were freezing. Stephanie grew up in Idaho. Stephanie kept a diary she never remembered to fill out.

So many thoughts about Stephanie came spilling out to the surface of her mind that Catherine couldn't speak – what did they want to know about her? And why? Why did they keep asking? Stephanie filled up and up and up in her brain and Catherine had to press her forehead to the cool surface of the table to try and make sense of it all. But when she looked back up at the cop, she still didn't know where to begin.

Gil watched nervously as Catherine clenched and unclenched her hands. His supervisor lingered by the door, concerned about the CSI-2's emotional attachment to this case. The cop saw Catherine's eyes roll back into her head and lunged quickly to grab her as she fainted and slid off the plastic chair.

"She's in shock," Gil's supervisor repeated quietly to himself and yelled down the hall, "Get an EMT in here."

Catherine recalled, somewhere along the line, the feeling of Gil's khaki jacket being draped across her but, when she came to, he had gone and Eddie had been called to drive her home.

- o -


	24. A Rise To Bait

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR]**

**I'm sorry, guys! The biggest reason for keeping me from continuing this sooner is because I hate these even-numbered chapters so much now. They're so clunky and repetitive, but I think it will get better later. Anyway, I'm adding two chapters at the same time to sort of make it up to anyone who's still reading. Thank you, Drusilla Braun, Stephanie, roxinsox, iwishiwerekerry, shadowsamurai83, Erica, Wizard-in-Disguise, FoxyWombat, Dr. Abby Kovac (I have no idea how it's pronounced, by the way, I've only ever read the word and thought it looked nice…), wendysam and Erin – who reminded me that this story still existed and that at least one person wanted it to keep going. Thanks everyone. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx**

- o -

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-Four. A Rise To Bait**

- o -

**(Now)**

Gil shuts his eyes for a second. He wanted to stop for just a moment, tell her to call the whole thing off, tell himself to call the whole thing off – just so they could stop being at each other's throats for a while. It was tiring; he was tired. How could he forget their past? How could he forget anything about her?

"Sometimes, Catherine –" he began, and then stopped. Already, Catherine's shoulders tightened up and she readied herself for ruthless defence.

"Sometimes what?"

"I don't know how you must think of me."

His eyes were open again and he saw her soften – a little – he was sure of it.

"What do you mean?" And he could hear the difference in her voice, too. Gentler. Her hands unclenched, fingers outstretched and toyed lightly with the fringe of the couch. She looked tired, too. How could he forget anything about her?

"I don't know –" Try to make sense of it; put it into words. "I don't know how you can think I don't care or don't remember. I'm not like you, Catherine. You tell me one thing, and I do it – but if you never tell me to stop…"

Catherine shook her head a little and Gil felt the air move with her. "Gil – you're not as clueless as you think. You know people, you do; you just don't trust what you know. Not unless you have the proof."

A smile touched his face. "That's the way I handle a lot of things."

He got up and paced a little, but then felt ridiculous – overdramatic. He stopped. The Vegas sun outside had climbed high since he'd last looked at it, and the air above the parked cars rippled unsteadily. Everything he can think of to say feels so adolescent, so outdated. There were feelings he had, once, and problems he thought were bigger than the both of them. Talking about this, talking about Sara, seemed like something he was far too old for and should say so. He could imagine Catherine's reaction, though. Something about how it wasn't juvenile to talk about relationships, that he was just making excuses to not probe too deeply into such things. Something about escapism.

Maybe he did know people better than he thought he did. Maybe he did know Catherine better than he thought he did. Maybe she was right.

"I don't know what to do about Sara," he suddenly found himself saying. Catherine looked up – he knew she had, even with his back to her.

"About…?"

"I don't know what to do about this." He waved a hand vaguely in the air and she was looking at him strangely when he did eventually turn to face her. Incomplete thoughts dotted through his head and he said them without thinking. This was a thing he never did.

"How can you think I'm not here for you?" he said. And: "It's not enough, is it? When you asked me – about Sara –"

He paused. Catherine was standing by then, standing next to him – one hand reached out as though to touch his shoulder.

"Gil."

"When you asked me why Sara – I said it was because she loved me." He spoke slowly, carefully. "It's not enough, is it? It's not enough to just be loved if it isn't mutual. It's deceitful and selfish, isn't it? And it isn't enough."

Catherine didn't know what to say in response, didn't even know how to react. What did he want to hear from her?

"Gil…" and hoped more words would follow.

"You ask me to back off, and I do. Then one day I realise that we've drifted too far and nothing is the same anymore," he went on, erratically. Catherine frowned – his train of thought was all over the place. Sara, Catherine, Eddie, Lindsey, Steph. "I didn't want to be coming to your house after shift to try and make sense of the different ways we've hurt each other. And even now, all we do is lie to one another."

"Gil – slow down," is all Catherine can think of to say.

He breathes, finally.

"Why are you so hurt by my relationship with Sara?"

Catherine blinks. He's stopped talking but the air is still ringing and she can't even hear herself when she begins to speak,

"All this time, I was telling myself we were becoming closer, building towards the final, evitable point when we would find each other and settle. I've been so convinced that there was point ahead when we would slip, clearly and simply, together."

She's as surprised as he is and they're standing, like duellers – what next?

"You knew," he says. "I told you. I told you and you told me to back off."

Catherine sighs, she winces and pulls her arms across her chest. She'd put it all out there – said what she'd said. "Knew _what_, Gil?"

"I told you," he repeats. "I was thirty-one and you'd just found out you were pregnant with Lindsay. I drove you to the clinic and held your hand in the waiting room – and I drove you home when you couldn't go through with it and decided to keep her. I begged you not to go back to Eddie. I _begged_ you."

Catherine bites on her lip so hard she tastes bitter iron. That was all true, she'd been so close to not having Lindsay: she'd filled in the form, she'd sat on the plastic chairs for half an hour.

"I told you that I loved you," Gil says. "Even though I was sure you knew. And you still went back to him."

And Catherine's mouth falls open. "You didn't tell me – how was I supposed to know?"

"I told you, Catherine," he says. "And I was sure you knew."

The air rings. Catherine shakes her head for a whole minute before she can shake up some words.

"I didn't," she says.

"I – I think I'd better go," he says.

She doesn't stop him, doesn't hear the door shutting at all. Outside, Gil starts up his car and drives.

- o -


	25. The Twelfth Night

**Disclaimer****: They're not mine.**

**Rating****: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.**

**Summary****: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR]**

**Forgive me, for my blatant manipulative use of pathetic fallacy. This was perhaps the second or third chapter of this fic that I wrote. I've had this written**** for a long time and have been constantly rewriting it whilst doing the other chapters. I probably shouldn't have said that. I've just built it up far too much. Shit. If I held on to it for another year, it'd probably look entirely different. (Just to clarify, by the way, I didn't call give this chapter this title because I think this is at all anything like Shakespeare's genius. I suddenly had the terrible thought that that's the impression I'm giving. That would be awful. No – it just sounds nice, don't you think?)**

- o -

**Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-Five. The ****Twelfth Night**

- o -

**(Then)**

A week after Stephanie's funeral, Catherine slept on Gil's couch – but didn't really sleep. He knew that, and hovered silently in his bedroom doorway at occasional small hours, watching her sit on the edge of the sofa and stare bleakly ahead of her. Catherine never knew he was there – wasn't sure that she really knew anything at all anymore.

"What happened?" Gil had asked the first night she came down from the fourth floor and knocked on his door after the funeral.

Catherine looked at him emptily and said, "Stephanie died last fortnight and Eddie thinks he can make me feel better by fucking me," in this hollow monotone. "Can I stay here for a while?"

Gil let her in and let her pretend to sleep on the couch every night for the next ten days. He told Eddie, when he ran into him in the lobby, that Catherine just needed time. Eddie shrugged his shoulders and collected his mail – he didn't mind – Gil was no threat to him and he didn't really want to live with Catherine while she was like this anyway. Gil thought for a moment that he'd like to punch Eddie in the mouth, but knew Eddie was stronger than him, so didn't.

Instead, Gil went upstairs to Catherine and watched her flick channels on the TV. He noticed that she wouldn't eat unless he forced her to – and only then something like cereal or sugar cubes that she picked with her fingers and took hours over eating; he noticed that she never really slept, but lay half-awake under blankets all day and sat up all night. He also noticed that she hadn't cried about Stephanie at all.

"This isn't healthy, Catherine," he told her gently before he left for work one evening.

Cross-legged on the sofa, she crushed a Froot Loop between her fingers and dubiously licked the dust that stuck to her whorl of her fingertip. "I'm not hungry," she replied.

Gil picked at the paint on the front door and watched as she wiped her finger on the knee of her jeans and put the cereal bowl down on the floor.

"You need to grieve," he said.

"I _am_ fucking grieving," she hissed in broken, angry words and pulled a blanket over herself up to her neck. Grissom sighed audibly on the threshold before picking up his kit and shutting the door behind him.

At work that night, Grissom watched the weather report on CNN in the break room and applied for Thursday night off – the twelfth night since Catherine had arrived and not slept at his apartment.

-

On the twelfth night – a Thursday – at about five o'clock in the afternoon, Gil fetched her coat from Eddie's apartment and went back down to his own. Catherine's eyes were glazed, watching an infomercial on a channel he didn't know he had, until he put her coat over the back of the couch and placed her sneakers in front of her.

Catherine looked up at him, standing there in his own coat – car keys in his hand and shoes on his feet. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and she didn't turn off the television.

"What's going on?" she demanded. Gil gestured to her coat.

"Put it on – we're going out," he said simply. Catherine's expression darkened; she sat back in the sofa firmly and pointedly turned the volume up on the set.

"No, I don't want to," she replied curtly.

The car keys jangled as he put them in his pocket and held out one hand to her.

"Come on."

Catherine frowned and clenched her teeth. "Why?" she spat.

Her fierce expression might've intimidated anyone else she knew, but it flew right over Gil with no effect.

"There's going to be a big storm tonight," he said. Catherine shot him a withering look.

"Surely that's more reason to stay in," she told him darkly.

"Come on," he said again and knelt down in front of her. He picked up one of her sneakers and took one of her feet in his hands, calmly putting her shoes on for her.

Catherine hated it – why was he being so infuriatingly patient? Couldn't he just _get_ that she didn't want to go with him for whatever stupid science thing he probably wanted to do in a storm? Couldn't he just leave her alone?

"I'm not a goddamn child, Gil," she snapped and kicked her foot from his grasp. She wanted to kick him, too – while he was knelt right in front of her like that. That would've shown him, she thought. But she didn't.

He stayed there, knelt in front of her and looked at her when she tried to look past him to the TV screen.

"Come on, Catherine," he said softly and wouldn't let her avoid his gaze. "We're going to go somewhere where everything feels like how you do inside."

Then he got up and went to the door. After a few minutes, Catherine pulled her coat off the back of the sofa, slung it around her shoulders and followed him out the front door – her untied shoelaces trailing behind her down the third-floor corridor.

-

She didn't say anything to him while he drove – down the Strip and kept going until the bright lights became sparser and normal people's houses lined the roads. The roads got smaller and more rugged the further they went and, when they finally went off road into bumpy, trackless desert, Gil just kept driving. Catherine said nothing.

Finally, after about ten minutes of driving off-road in his work-issued Denali, Gil slowed the car to a halt, put the handbrake up and switched off the engine.

"That's it?" Catherine turned to him. "What now?"

"Now we wait," he said. Catherine sighed exasperatedly and twisted beneath her seat belt before she released it. It was all rocky, desert horizon.

"Okay – so we'll just wait out here until, yknow, we get eaten by wolves or something?"

Gil unbuckled his seat belt and looked at his watch. "There are no wolves in the desert, Catherine," he told her and they didn't say anything for another seven minutes.

"This is fucking stupid," she shouted suddenly in the car. She looked at him with blazing eyes and Gil wondered why she'd get angry – yell and swear at him – but never cry for Stephanie. "I didn't _want_ to come out here tonight, Gil, and now we're just sitting in your fucking car doing nothing. What the fuck do you want from me?"

He waited until she'd finished yelling and sat fuming beside him before he answered with maddening serenity,

"Just wait."

Catherine snapped – this was so fucking pointless. Why the hell didn't he just leave her at home? Why couldn't he just give up and ignore her like Eddie had done? Not drive her out into the middle of the goddamn desert to sit and wait for some fucking storm that she didn't want to see anyway.

"I'm fucking _sick_ of waiting," she bit furiously into his ear and, before he had time to react, snatched his standard-issue gun from the glove compartment and ran outside.

"Shit," Grissom swore under his breath – he'd forgotten about the gun. He always kept it in there – didn't like taking it into the house or carrying it on him. The other CSIs and cops might be fine with that, but it didn't feel like him – so he left it in the glove compartment and didn't think about it. Catherine had remembered, though, evidently.

Gil jumped out of the car.

"Catherine," he called to her as she ran out in front of his car and stood in the middle of the desert which looked the same at dusk for miles around. "Catherine – give that back."

She spun around to look at him, holding the gun in her right hand – her eyes flashed dangerously.

"What are you trying to get out of me, Gil?" she shouted. "How the hell do you know how I feel? You have no idea. You didn't lose her. I lost her. Just me – no-one else. Her Mom is dead, her dad was never around, her sister ran away to Chicago when she was fifteen; nobody fucking cared about Stephanie – but I did. And I was the only one to lose."

Gil didn't say anything, but watched her yell at him, loud as she could, waving that gun around with the safety off. He wondered if she'd cry then, mentioning Stephanie, but her eyes stayed dry.

"So don't tell me how I feel because you have no idea," she continued, her voice getting hoarse. "And I'm not gonna wait out here for your goddamn storm. I'm not going to _wait_."

She yelled that last word harder than any of the others, raised the gun above her head and fired a shot into the heavy clouds above her head as though trying to puncture a hole. She'd never fired a gun before. It felt good.

"Fuck – you," she screamed and Grissom wasn't sure if she was yelling at him, at whoever killed Stephanie or at the higher power she never believed in anyway. Either way, she emptied the cartridge at the sky and just stood there and screamed when she didn't have angry enough words to say. Gil lifted himself up and sat on the hood of the car – just let her do it.

When the sixth and last bullet flew up, lost momentum and fell back down, it pinged to the ground by Grissom's car. And then, he noticed on the dirt beside it, something else fell from the sky. And then another, an inch away from Catherine's feet. Rain. The sky opened up and screamed its storm right back down on them.

Catherine's arms hung down uselessly and she let the gun fall from her hand as the rain pelted down faster and harder than she'd ever felt it rain before. Within seconds, her clothes were soaked through and her shirt clung to her skin while she tried to blink the falling rain from her eyes, peering through the storm to find Gil. He slid off the hood of the Denali as it got too slippery and removed his jacket – heavy with rain. Standing on the desert ground, which attempted to soak as much rain into its parched sand as quickly as possible, Gil looked around for Catherine.

Suddenly, she came through the rain and appeared in front of him. Her cheeks were wet but, on closer inspection, Gil saw it was only rain.

"Gil," she said in his ear, over the sound of raindrop thudding on the car. "Gil – fuck me."

Gil's eyes widened. "What?" he asked in disbelief. Catherine leant close, pressed herself up against his body – both of them soaked. Grissom swallowed hard – he couldn't do this, Catherine was upset – but he was only human and, worse, he'd wanted this more than she knew.

"Eddie can't make me better with sex," she hollered over the sound of the rain. "But you can."

She placed her palms on his chest and ran them up, over his shoulders, pulling him in to kiss him – open-mouthed – on his neck. The rain ran rivers down both of them and Grissom clenched his fists to feel her tongue on his skin – raw and animalistic.

"Don't," he said, struggling to keep composure.

"I'm empty, Gil," she groaned into his ear – her lips close enough to feel. Catherine knew how to manipulate a man; she made a living from it, and formed every word with full, willing lips as she breathed, "Fill me up."

Her hand travelled down his body and teased the zipper on his pants; her nail clicked down – counting every metal tooth of his fly. A small, purposeful smile crossed her lips as she felt Gil's body respond beneath her cupped hand. Gil squeezed his eyes shut and hated her for doing this to him – he loved her – and he wanted her to be happy – but this wasn't the way to do it.

Reacting before he had time to rethink, before his body overtook his senses and allowed him to do what he'd dreamt of doing more times than he could count, Gil pushed Catherine off him in one strong move.

"Stop it, Catherine," he yelled, now the furious one. Catherine stumbled backwards and stared at him through the rain, shocked. "Stop fucking around. You only have two real friends in this world and one of them is dead, so don't lose me like this."

Catherine didn't do anything but stand there in front of him for a while. Then, finally, she cried. Gil saw her crumble and shrink to a ball on the floor, burying her face in her knees like a small child. Her shoulders shook and she sobbed so loudly he couldn't even hear the rain anymore. Gil breathed a sigh.

After a few minutes of Catherine's anguished sobbing on the desert floor, Gil went and knelt beside her. He put his arms around her and pulled her like a baby onto his lap, holding her close. She turned her face into his chest and cried and cried – a month of unshed tears that wracked her whole body and more.

"It's okay, it's okay," he murmured into her hair and rocked her gently. After ten more minutes, it had stopped raining and Catherine stopped crying. She sat in his lap and pressed small kisses to his face as tears ran quietly down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, Gil."

He wiped her eyes with his sleeve and kissed her tear-stained cheeks. "It's okay."

She blinked a couple of times. "I love you," she whispered.

It was getting darker now and Gil hoped they would be able to find their way back alright. He got to his feet and picked her up.

"Let's go home," he said and carried her back to the car. Drained, exhausted, and on her way to being healed, Catherine fell asleep on the long drive home.

Gil laid her on the couch and covered her over when they got home; happy when she slept through the night, frustrated when he felt her fingers tempt the zipper on his pants again that night in his dreams. Catherine would never know how hard she was to get over, but it was some consolation to Gil Grissom when he watched her get better over the next two weeks.

On the last night that she stayed at his apartment, he came home from work to find that she'd cooked macaroni and cheese for them both. He saw her smiling in the kitchen – uncorking the wine, eating with him and laughing as she'd always done.

The next night, she was back on the fourth floor, sleeping with Eddie on creaking bedsprings above Gil's head.

- o -


End file.
